Oral Answers to Questions

WORK AND PENSIONS

The Secretary of State was asked—

Pension Credit (North-West Leicestershire)

David Taylor: How many pensioners in North-West Leicestershire (a) qualify for and (b) receive pension credit.

Peter Hain: In February 2007, an estimated 3,650 households—4,470 individuals—in North-West Leicestershire were receiving pension credit, but the numbers eligible are not available at constituency level.

David Taylor: I am delighted that my right hon. Friend survived the shuffle and did not have to register with what has proved to be his new Department.
	The recent report of the Public Accounts Committee into the DWP's progress in tackling pensioner poverty highlighted a wide variation in benefit take-up rates around Great Britain, with the lowest rates in pockets of deprivation located in rural and otherwise prosperous areas. Can the Secretary of State tell the House what initiatives are planned to provide funding for community, voluntary and not-for-profit organisations in such settings to increase take-up among vulnerable and other hard to reach groups?

Peter Hain: I am grateful for what my hon. Friend said at the beginning, and for his message of support. We constantly look at initiatives and opportunities, including the use of the voluntary sector, which can often play an absolutely vital part, especially in assisting senior citizens. Over recent years, we have visited 1 million households to try to push the pension credit out further. We are constantly phoning people, because it is now easy to take up pension credit over the telephone rather than having to fill out a form. I urge everybody concerned—those who may be watching the debate and colleagues throughout the House—to make sure that every pensioner in their constituency who may be entitled to pension credit is put in touch so that they can claim it.

David Laws: I welcome the Secretary of State and his new team to the Treasury Bench, along with a couple of older faces— [Interruption.] Experienced faces.
	The Secretary of State will be aware that many people who have lost their occupational pension over the past 10 years are concerned about ending up on means-tested benefits. As the new Administration are supposed to be listening and learning and changing policy, how does he intend to respond to the almost universal condemnation of the financial assistance scheme, and will he be able to respond positively when the Pensions Bill comes back amended from another place?

Peter Hain: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome. I think he accepted the correction that an experienced team has joined the newcomers like me.
	It has clearly been a scandal that people lost their pension as a result of their company going bust and taking the pension fund down with it. That is a scandal, but we have put £8 billion into providing assistance for people in that position and we shall continue to support them in a way that was never done before. We shall obviously consider the House of Lords amendments when the Bill returns to this place, but whatever issues need to be worked through we should recognise the big picture: £8 billion has been put in to rescue people from the plight they would otherwise suffer.

David Anderson: I, too, welcome my right hon. Friend. Although he did not get the job I wanted him to have, I am glad that he has a job that is so important for this country.
	Whether in North-West Leicestershire or any other part of the country, it is clear that we must listen to people who represent pensioners in taking forward important cases, so I urge my right hon. Friend to sit down as soon as possible with representatives of the National Pensioners Convention, to get them on side in the work we are trying to do to make things better for all our people.

Peter Hain: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The National Pensioners Convention plays an absolutely vital role in championing the interests of senior citizens. I was concerned to hear that apparently there was no Labour party representative at the last conference, which I think was in Blackpool. We shall have to put that right in future, because we want to work with the convention and other representatives from pensioners organisations to make sure that the policies deliver what is intended—justice for pensioners.

Employment (Disabled People)

Julie Morgan: What steps he is taking to provide more opportunities for people with disabilities to work.

Anne McGuire: We have a number of programmes designed to provide help to disabled people, and in the year to April 2007 those programmes supported more than 50,000 people both to get into and retain employment. We are currently reviewing our employment services for disabled people and intend to consult on our proposals later in the year.

Julie Morgan: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. I am pleased that she is still in the same position as she speaks up very well for disabled people.
	Has my hon. Friend made any assessment of the effectiveness of the pathways work-focused interviews for incapacity benefit claimants? Many of them are enthusiastic and keen to work but are understandably anxious because they feel the nature of their condition may not be fully understood. Recent DWP research seems to indicate that, too, so does my hon. Friend think that the carrot may be more important than the stick?

Anne McGuire: I thank my hon. Friend for raising that question. As she will be aware, one of the changes that we will implement—linked to the successful implementation of our pathways to work pilot—relates to the welfare reform proposals. Linked to that are the changes in the personal capability assessment, which will reflect far more accurately some of the issues that disabled people—particularly those who have a mental health condition—and their organisations have raised with us. Organisations and individuals told us, over a consistent period, that they did not feel that the personal capability assessment quite reflected the fluctuating nature of mental health conditions, and we worked with those organisations over a number of months to ensure that the new personal capability assessment recognises the issues that are particular to those with fluctuating conditions.

Hywel Williams: May I, through the Minister, welcome the Secretary of State to his new work? I hope that he is able to fit his new duties in around his job as Secretary of State for Wales.
	What would the Minister say to Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Peter Black, who said this morning in the  Western Mail
	"benefits and disability payments discourage claimants from seeking work"?
	Does she agree with him?

Anne McGuire: No, I do not. My apologies for not having read the  Western Mail this morning; I was busy reading  The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald. May I correct a discourtesy? I did not thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) for the kind words at the beginning of her question.
	I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees that we want disability benefits to be used to support people who have indicated that they want to move into work. That is why the new welfare reform proposals are so crucial. We recognise that many people who are on incapacity benefit, for example, want to get into work. The issue is not their express desire to get into work; the real difficulty is breaking down the barriers involved in their getting into work. Some of those barriers are created by attitudinal issues relating to employers and those in the community who look continually at what people cannot do, not at what they can do. The issue is about changing that perception and that reality.

John Heppell: I, too, congratulate the Minister on keeping her job and continuing her role as a champion for people with disabilities. I think that everybody in the House would agree that, where possible, it is more important to get people into mainstream employment than into sheltered employment, but what guarantees have we got, in the context of the changes that are coming to Remploy, that some of the vulnerable people in sheltered employment will not be forced into compulsory redundancy?

Anne McGuire: I thank my hon. Friend, not just for his question but for the sterling work that he did to support the Department for Work and Pensions team as a DWP Whip. I am delighted that he has not lost his voice. Having been in the Whips Office myself for an extended period of time, I know how difficult it is. Members who have been Whips sometimes feel as though they have actually lost the ability to speak in the House. He has clearly not lost either that ability, or his incisive style of questioning. I can reassure him that, first, the Remploy proposals are just that—they are proposals. Secondly, we have always been clear that we want to ensure that disabled people have a choice. Thirdly, we still see a role for supported factories. Finally, both the previous Secretary of State, the current Secretary of State and I have stated that there will be no compulsory redundancies for disabled people who are currently employed by Remploy. They will have protected terms and conditions, including a final salary pension, through to their normal retirement age. The proposals, however, are the subject of discussion between management and the trade unions at this time.

Philip Hammond: I, too, welcome the new Secretary of State to his post and congratulate him and his team of Ministers on their appointments. We look forward to a constructive engagement with them on the many important issues in his in-tray. The Freud report sets out a funding model for extending the reach of welfare-to-work programmes to include hundreds of thousands of people trapped on inactive long-term benefits—not least people with disabilities—by engaging the private and voluntary sectors. Can the Minister tell the House where the new Government stand on the implementation of the Freud report?

Anne McGuire: "The new Government" is a bit of embroidery; we are the same Labour Government who came in with the intention of tackling unemployment, reducing the barriers that many disabled people and those on long-term benefits had to put up with for many years, and turning round the situation in which the number of people put on incapacity benefit tripled during 18 years of the Conservative Government. Our intentions regarding the Freud report will be made entirely clear to both the House and the hon. Gentleman when we issue our response to it.

Philip Hammond: I appreciate the hon. Lady's difficulty because she is serving a Prime Minister who has made it clear that he expects unswerving loyalty to the party line, yet the party line on this issue is not clear. The Prime Minister harangued David Freud in his office before the report was published. He then sat on a platform with David Freud and implicitly endorsed the report, after which his Chief Secretary wrote to the then Secretary of State to make it clear that he would not fund the implementation or piloting of the proposals in the report. After 10 years of Labour promises on welfare reform, may we please have a straight answer: when will we be told whether the Government will back Freud, or block him?

Anne McGuire: May I say, with the greatest courtesy to the hon. Gentleman, that he should at least give the Government true recognition for aiming to tackle some of the legacy that we inherited of people being placed on incapacity benefit and abandoned? The number of such people tripled under the previous Government. I would be interested to know which particular fly he was on the wall as he seems to be giving us chapter and verse on what happened during a conversation that was private to those who participated in it. Let me reassure the hon. Gentleman that he will find out our comments on the Freud report and the way forward when we issue our Green Paper on it.

Philip Hammond: When?

Anne McGuire: The hon. Gentleman will find that out when we issue the Green Paper. I will not be held to a timetable by him.

Dari Taylor: I am delighted that my hon. Friend is still in her post as Minister for the disabled.
	The Minister knows that 66 per cent. of the blind and partially sighted want to be in work, but remain outside work. Visage, Action for Blind People's employment programme, and access to work, the Government's employment programme, are excellent. What is she doing to encourage employers to take on board both those programmes and to persuade them that blind and other disabled people should be looked at never for their disablement, but for their ability?

Anne McGuire: I thank my hon. Friend for the kind comments at the beginning of her question. She has done an enormous amount to highlight the difficulties that those with visual impairment and blindness find when trying to move into work. I am delighted that she highlights the access to work programme. The Government have quadrupled the value of that programme since we took office in 1997, and some £60 million is spent on supporting people to move into work and retain employment.
	My hon. Friend highlights the important point that there is under-employment among those with a visual impairment and blindness. We need to change employers' attitudes—this links with the answer that I gave the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams)—so that they start to appreciate that disabled people bring skills and experience to the work force. We continue to do that through our general work, and later this year we will launch the "Employ Ability" initiative, which will focus on employers looking at people for what they can do, not what they cannot do.

Alan Beith: What recent assessment he has made of the prospects of employment in Northumberland for people with disabilities.

Anne McGuire: Opportunities for disabled people both to get into and retain employment are better than ever in Northumberland and elsewhere. We have a substantial range of programmes to help disabled people to get into work and to help those in work to stay in work. As always, we are looking to improve our services so that people who want to work can work.

Alan Beith: Is the Minister aware that even now Northumberland remains a difficult place for jobs, especially for disabled people? My constituents who work at the Remploy factory in Ashington are worried not only about their positions, but those of the people who might come after them. In an area where employment is not so readily available, should not the Remploy factory have a continuing role in some kind of training capacity to enable disabled people to go into employment?

Anne McGuire: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for asking that question, and in that context. He is right to identify the issue of a continuing role for Remploy, but I remind the House that Remploy is not just about the supported factory network; there is also an employment services element. He might be interested to know that in the north-east Remploy factories, some 463 people are in the supported factory network, but there are nearly 300 in the employment services element of the Remploy operation. Remploy management are obviously negotiating on the proposals. I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman has taken up an offer to meet the chief executive of Remploy, but if he has not done so, I hope that he will.

Incapacity Benefits

Ashok Kumar: What progress has been made in reducing the number of people on incapacity benefits.

Peter Hain: Claimant numbers more than trebled between the late 1970s and mid-1990s. We have reversed that trend, and the position is very different now. New incapacity benefit claims have dropped by more than a third, and in the year to November 2006 the number of people on incapacity benefit was down by 38,000.

Ashok Kumar: I welcome the Secretary of State to his new post and wish him well for the future. In my constituency, a large number of diagnoses made by GPs to determine eligibility for incapacity benefits are now going to appeal. What measures are taken to ensure that such diagnoses are accurate?

Peter Hain: Obviously, we need continuously to monitor the situation, but the personal capability assessment remains the most robust system that we have devised for assessing incapacity at work. A number of cases—I think around half—succeed on appeal if they have been initially rejected under that process of assessment because there is then more information available than there was at the time when the assessment was made. We need to ensure that the system works fairly, that all the doctors involved are fully trained in applying the terms of personal capability assessment and that their reports are regularly monitored.

John Gummer: Will the right hon. Gentleman use the opportunity of his new arrival at the Department to look again at the way in which those who lose an arm and therefore do not have the use of a hand are treated compared to those who lose a leg? At the moment those who lose an arm are very much less generously treated and sometimes have great difficulty finding work.

Peter Hain: I would be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman if he could provide me with any details, especially of his constituents and others whom he knows to be affected in that way. The situation will depend on the individual assessment, but we do not want to treat anyone unfairly. If he has any information that would enable us to deal with his question, I would be glad to receive it.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I welcome my right hon. Friend to his new position. We are doing a great deal of work to help those people who have only recently come on to incapacity benefit. What plans does my right hon. Friend have for people who have been on incapacity benefit for a great number of years, and who are not very confident about going back to work?

Peter Hain: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's welcome. As she knows, we are rolling out the pathways to work programme nationally over the coming period. In the Rhondda valley in south Wales, near my constituency, it has been hugely successful in getting people on incapacity benefit back into work. My hon. Friend is also right to draw attention to another matter, which is that the longer people are on incapacity benefit, the more likely it is that they will never come off it. That is one of the reasons we are addressing the issue of reform in the arrangements for welfare to work, especially in respect of disabled people, so that they have the opportunity to work, and so that we can encourage them to do so.

Mark Pritchard: The Secretary of State will know that many people claiming incapacity benefit suffer from back pain and stress. Although those conditions are serious, does he agree that there is a small fraudulent element claiming that benefit, which needs to be investigated more? How robust will he be with people who are making fraudulent claims?

Peter Hain: Obviously, anyone making a fraudulent claim should be identified and that should be exposed and dealt with robustly. As the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), has just reminded me, the number of fraudulent claims is down significantly, perhaps as much as two thirds. That shows that we are being tough on fraudulent claims, but we must also make sure that people are treated fairly.

Natascha Engel: I welcome my right hon. Friend to his new position. I am very pleased that he is at the Department for Work and Pensions. May I invite him up to North-East Derbyshire, where part of the first pathways to work pilot in Derbyshire took place, which was also the first in England, and the most successful in the country, obviously? We have a project in Staveley where the welfare rights organisations are working closely with Jobcentre Plus to identify the skills needs and the jobs that will be available in the next 10 years, which is one of the key elements in getting people off incapacity benefit and into work. If my right hon. Friend would like to come and visit the project, we will make him a cup of tea.

Peter Hain: I thank my hon. Friend. As she voted for me for the deputy leadership, the answer to her invitation must be yes. I congratulate her on her wisdom and good judgment in that vote, by the way. She has identified an extremely important issue, and I will gladly look at the project when I come to her constituency.

Benefits ( Disabled People)

Richard Ottaway: What measures he has introduced to simplify the assessment process of benefits for people with disabilities.

Anne McGuire: For people with health problems and disabilities, we will be introducing the new employment and support allowance, which will be a single benefit combining earnings replacement and the income-related elements. We are also committed to simplifying the claiming process for disability living allowance and attendance allowance customers, and have already made substantial improvements.

Richard Ottaway: I am pleased to hear that. Is the Minister aware that disabled people have to answer 1,351 questions across 412 pages to get up to 10 benefits? Is she aware that less than 20 per cent. of those questions are unique, 40 per cent. of them are repeated at least three times, and 16 per cent. are repeated at least twice? She must agree that that is inefficient duplication. Will she please explain what she intends to do about it?

Anne McGuire: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and I want colleagues to know that I discern a split in the Conservative ranks on the matter. The shadow Minister for Disabled People, the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), said that there were 1,200 questions over 352 pages, which sits at odds with the statistics that we have just heard. We in the Government know that we must simplify benefit application forms, but we should not give the impression that every disabled person applying for a benefit has to answer all the questions that the hon. Gentleman highlighted.
	We can play around with statistics, but the danger is that such a numerical approach may create a fear among disabled people that it is almost impossible to get through the benefits system. In fact, 2.8 million people in Britain claim disability living allowance. We try to make it as easy and as straightforward as possible. We work with organisations that will assist and support individuals claiming the benefit. We offer a form-filling service through the disability and carers service, and we offer a very supportive helpline. Yes, we need to look at simplification, but no, we should not—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Barry Gardiner: I thank my hon. Friend for the way that she has supported the disabled people at Carlyon Print Service in my constituency, 23 of whom are out of work owing to the lack of foresight on the part of the local Liberal Democrat and Conservative council. Will my hon. Friend condemn that short-sighted move by the council, and ensure that when those people are making the transition from work in those sheltered surroundings back to unemployment, their benefits transition is facilitated as much as possible? May I invite her to the reception that I will be hosting for those individuals later this month in the House of Commons?

Anne McGuire: I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I know that he has made a commitment to the Carlyon print factory in the face of the local council's decision. I would, of course, be delighted to attend the reception. Jobcentre Plus and the DWP will do all they can sensitively to support his constituents' transition from work to benefits and, we hope, back into work.

John Butterfill: In the course of reviewing that assessment, will the Minister re-examine the anomalous treatment of those who are physically disabled and are perhaps in wheelchairs and those who are totally blind or severely visually impaired? At the moment, those who are visually impaired or blind do not qualify for the higher rate of mobility allowance. The Minister will no doubt have noted that more than half the Back Benchers in this House have signed my early-day motion on the subject, and I wonder whether she will reconsider the matter.

Anne McGuire: The hon. Gentleman and I spoke at the lobby of Parliament undertaken by the Royal National Institute of the Blind. We are engaging in discussions with the RNIB to consider the issues and to decide whether we can develop criteria that meet some of the RNIB's demands in relation to people who are totally blind. I will, of course, keep the House apprised of the outcome of those discussions.

Russell Brown: Although simplification of the assessment process for benefits, and especially for the disability living allowance, is important, the length of time that that assessment takes is equally important. The Princess Royal Trust for Carers in my constituency has told me that the process takes far too long. I appreciate that my hon. Friend may not have the figures to hand—I would therefore appreciate it if she were to write to me—but will she disclose the average time it takes to process a DLA claim? If she believes that the process takes too long, what does she intend to do to speed it up?

Anne McGuire: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I do in fact have the figures to hand: the average clearance time for DLA claims under the normal rules is 36.8 days, and many claims are handled much more quickly than that. The average clearance time for attendance allowance claims is 16.6 days, which is just over two weeks. Those who apply under the special rules procedure—those who have a terminal illness or condition—have their claim turned around in five days.

Jeremy Hunt: I, too, welcome the Minister back to her post. Her length of service may soon rival the length of the forms filled in by disabled people. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway) has referred to the complexity of the disability benefit system. The matter involves not only the frustration felt by disabled people in having to fill out those forms, but the barriers to work that those forms create. What would the Minister say to a young man in his 20s from Northern Ireland who has cerebral palsy and whose father told me at the weekend that his son wants nothing more than to be able to work? Because of the complex rules covering how much work that young man can do, he knows that if he works for more than four hours a week, his benefit will be docked.

Anne McGuire: Of course we recognise that the benefit system must support people who want to move into work, which is one of the reasons we have moved to the new employment support allowance. We use all sorts of means to get the message across to disabled people that there are opportunities in the labour market. I do not know the specifics in Northern Ireland, because, as the hon. Gentleman knows or should know, social security in Northern Ireland is managed discretely from social security in Great Britain. The matter is not as straightforward as he likes to make it out to be, and it involves more than simply reducing the number of questions, because many benefits need to be tailored to the needs and demands of the individual. We need the information to make the right judgment at the right time to get the right benefit to the right person as soon as possible.

Lost Working Days

Ben Chapman: What steps he is taking to reduce the number of work days lost through sickness.

James Plaskitt: The Revitalising Health and Safety strategy was set in place in 2000. It adopted a target to reduce the number of working days lost from work-related injury and ill health by 30 per cent. by 2010. The strategy is working. Taking ill health and injuries together, the number of working days lost per worker has fallen from 1.8 days in 2002-03 to 1.3 days in 2005-06. Over the past decade, total working days lost have fallen from 40 million to 30 million.

Ben Chapman: While that progress is very much to be welcomed, the absolute figures remain staggeringly large. Wirral, for example, has a relatively poor record in terms of getting people who have been sick and injured back into employment. Does my hon. Friend accept that getting back to work is the final step to full rehabilitation, but that to achieve that one must have employer, individual and Government working together? What more is to be done in that regard?

James Plaskitt: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the fact that this involves everybody. Of course, we want to help people who have suffered injury or illness to get back to work. There is clearly a part for Government, which is why we have the strategy in place. There is a part for employers—small and medium, as well as large—with whom we work on the delivery of that strategy. In respect of helping individuals, training, advice and awareness campaigns are important. That is why we do a lot to promote the prevention of these things in the first place, and why the occupational health service regularly visits employers to help to promote best practice, such as the better backs campaign, which in itself has led to a reduction of 1.5 million in the number of working days lost as a result of back injury.

David Ruffley: I shall not congratulate the hon. Gentleman on keeping his job, because more importantly I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell) for being a constructive and terrific Whip on the Welfare Reform Bill, and to the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr. Murphy), who is not in his place, but who was an extremely thoughtful Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform.
	The issue of sick notes is a big one, because it condemns too many of our fellow citizens to benefit dependency. Too often, sick notes are signed off too easily by some GPs. In January 2006, the Government's Green Paper rightly said that the sick note culture needs to be tackled, and they proposed incentives to GPs to help people back into work through a reformed primary care trust contract and the use of employment advisers in surgeries. I wonder why those policies have not been implemented—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That could have been said at the beginning and we would not have had the speech.

James Plaskitt: We got there eventually, Mr. Speaker. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his generous comments about my colleagues at the start of his question.
	All the statistics show that the measures that we are taking are helping more people who have been the victims of sickness or injury at work to get back into work more quickly than before. In the past five years alone, the number of working days lost as a result of workplace injury has declined by 2 million, and those as a result of ill health at work by 7 million, so a total of 9 million extra days have been added to the economy. The measures that we are taking, in conjunction with the health service, are helping to reduce lost working days and to help more people back into work more quickly.

Terry Rooney: My hon. Friend is right to point to the fall in numbers, but that still equates to 100,000 full-time employees having a year off. Has he studied the system in Holland, where it is incumbent on employers, through legislation, to engage in rehabilitating employees who have fallen sick or ill? Getting greater involvement of employers, especially with occupational therapies, could have a major impact on the figures.

James Plaskitt: My hon. Friend is right that rehabilitation is important. It forms part of many of our discussions with employers and other organisations to help ensure that the services are available and that advice is given. He is right to identify rehabilitation as a significant factor in helping us do even better.

Employment Services

Philip Dunne: What recent representations his Department has received on the use of the private and voluntary sectors in the provision of employment services for benefit recipients.

Caroline Flint: The use of the private and voluntary sectors, alongside Jobcentre Plus, has provided our customers with access to innovative approaches to helping people back to work. Ministers and officials regularly meet representatives of the private and voluntary sectors. For example, the Provision Forum meets quarterly to share information, intelligence and ideas about the delivery of our successful labour market programmes.

Philip Dunne: May I congratulate the Minister on her new appointment? As she works with her right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to encourage him into one of the first U-turns of his premiership to support the Freud report conclusions, does she intend to follow the example of Holland, where private and voluntary sector agencies told the Select Committee when we visited a year ago that they succeed most in returning people with disabilities to work the earlier they intervene? In this country, people are not eligible for disability living allowance until they have been out of work for six weeks.

Caroline Flint: Well, DLA is not an out-of-work benefit for a start. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks but emphasise that, in the past 10 years, the private and voluntary sectors have been more engaged in supporting people back to work, especially in areas where people have particular challenges, such as disability and child care problems. I have been in the job for only a few days and I am examining the Freud report. He makes interesting points about the way in which we can increase the capacity of the private and voluntary sectors and consider different methods of bearing down on some areas where we can do better. Clearly, we have done well: 900,000 people are off benefits and more people than ever are in work. However, challenges remain and we are up for the task.

Andrew Miller: The private and voluntary sectors that work at the coal face do a tremendous job in helping shape new futures for people with disabilities. Would it not be a good idea for them to liaise with our friends who work with the DLA, examine the business process of delivering it and conduct the assessment at the coal face, working with the voluntary sector and the business community?

Caroline Flint: The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), reminds me that two different benefits are operating. However, I have heard the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). I am only a few days into the job and I shall examine several matters to ascertain how we can perform better. I am sure that he agrees that some fantastic work is already happening throughout the country to support people with or without disabilities to get back into the workplace.

Tom Levitt: I, too, welcome my hon. Friend to her new position. She knows as well as anyone that the voluntary sector has much to offer in employment services and many other aspects of the Department's work. Although I acknowledge that it contributes much in cost efficiency, innovation and new and appropriate methods of tailoring services to individual needs, does she acknowledge that the large players in the voluntary sector should not have the game entirely to themselves? There is scope for local commissioning with smaller organisations in the voluntary sector when delivering services.

Caroline Flint: My hon. Friend makes a good point. Clearly there are issues about capacity and value for money. We must also recognise that many smaller organisations already provide the sort of niche services that are so essential to helping some people in the community who want to get back to work and need special support. I hope that, in the months and years ahead, we can combine the best of the large organisations, but ensure, through different means, including sub-contracting, that the niche services are fully supported. We are listening to concerns—the Department is very much in listening mode.

Financial Assistance Scheme

Henry Bellingham: When he next expects to meet representatives of private pension schemes to discuss the financial assistance scheme.

Mike O'Brien: I have no appointments as yet to meet private sector pension providers, but I hope to do so in due course. In the meantime, my officials are in contact with the various private sector providers.

Henry Bellingham: I too welcome the hon. and learned Member to his new ministerial post. Is he aware that I represent a large number of constituents who are members of the Albert Fisher pension scheme and that, even after the Government's changes, they are not going to receive their full pension entitlement? In other words, they will still be short-changed in their retirement. They blame the former Chancellor for the devastation caused to private pensions. Are they right to do so?

Mike O'Brien: They are certainly not right to do so. The previous Government set in place a whole series of changes to pension laws, which caused all sorts of problems for the pensions industry. Before laying blame on the Government, the hon. Gentleman should take the mote out of his own eye.

David Crausby: Should my hon. and learned Friend meet representatives of private pension schemes, will he tell them that if they had not spent so much time on contributions holidays, there would not be the same need for a financial assistance scheme? Will he remind them that it is thanks to the efforts of the present Government that thousands and thousands of pensioners will now be able to claim compensation rather than die in poverty?

Mike O'Brien: My hon. Friend is right. Contribution holidays, which were encouraged by some of the policies put in place by a previous Chancellor—now Lord Lamont—were part of the problem. This Government had to tackle the pensions mis-selling crisis that was also created by the previous Government. We created the Pension Protection Fund to deal with the problems of occupational pensions, we have put in place a new pensions regulator and we are helping 125,000 people through the financial assistance scheme. We will continue to put in place policies through the Pensions Bill to ensure that we remedy the various problems that were indeed caused by the previous Government.

Julie Kirkbride: I have two sets of constituents who have lost their pensions: people who worked for MG Rover and those who worked for United Engineering Forgings. Those who lost their pension from MG Rover receive the protection of the Pension Protection Fund, while those in UEF secure only the financial assistance scheme, which offers considerably less compensation. Will the Minister now put my constituents out of their misery by finally accepting the lifeboat proposal championed by Conservative Members that would provide equality of compensation to my two equal sets of constituents?

Mike O'Brien: Perhaps the hon. Lady should listen to her own shadow Chancellor who said at a meeting of  The Independent newspaper that at the Conservative conference,
	"lots of Conservatives... come up to me and say we've really got to put more money into pensions"
	He continued by saying that
	"part of the test of whether we are ready for government is whether we can resist those additional draws on public expenditure".
	This Government have put forward a set of proposals in pensions legislation that will deal with many of the issues relating to people who have lost pensions. Also, the proposals in the financial assistance scheme create the right balance between the taxpayer helping some of those who are affected and ensuring that pensions get a reasonable deal. The basic minimum that we are guaranteeing is 80 per cent. If they are covered by the Pension Protection Fund, they will be able to receive 90 per cent., but we should remember that people covered by that scheme have to make a contribution—it is more like an insurance policy—while no contribution was made by people under the FAS.

Derek Wyatt: I should like to welcome my hon. and learned Friend to his position. Can he tell me—or, if not, will he write to me—whether primary legislation will be necessary in order for people to access private pension schemes in the City?

Mike O'Brien: As my hon. Friend knows, Andrew Young is undertaking a review. We hope to get an interim report by the end of July and then a final report towards the end of this year. We then hope to be able to identify what we can access in respect of available funds. One of the concerns about the lifeboat proposal is that it is really an unfunded commitment. The Conservatives are quite happy to make such commitments, but we are the Government and we have to deal with these issues responsibly. Whatever we propose has to be properly funded.

Occupational Health

Sally Keeble: What recent discussions he has had with the Health and Safety Executive on European Union legislation on occupational health.

James Plaskitt: Most recently, we have discussed the new European Community strategy on health and safety at work. This is a wide-ranging strategy for the next five years and we welcome it. The ideas that it contains fit well with our own existing policies and programmes.

Sally Keeble: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply. Will he ensure that, in those talks, proper attention is given to workplace-related violence, particularly as it affects health workers, shop workers and transport workers, so that they can get proper protection and recognition of the injuries that they suffer at work?

James Plaskitt: My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point. I can confirm that, through the Health and Safety Executive, we issue sector-specific guidance to each of the sectors that she has just mentioned. Happily, that is helping to reduce the incidence of violence at work. Over the past 10 years, the number of incidents has fallen from 1.3 million a year to 600,000. Even that level is completely unacceptable, however, and that kind of violence cannot be tolerated. I recommend the freedom from fear campaign being mounted by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, which is aimed at countering violence in the retail trade. On 11 July, USDAW is holding a respect for shop workers day, which I hope that all hon. Members will support in their constituencies.

LEADER OF THE HOUSE

The Leader of the House was asked—

Public Engagement (Debates)

Julie Morgan: What plans she has to make debate on the Floor of the House more engaging for the general public.

Harriet Harman: The Modernisation Committee published its report last week on revitalising the Chamber. The Committee made a number of recommendations which would make the business of the House more engaging for the general public by promoting greater topicality and greater clarity.

Julie Morgan: I thank my right hon. Friend for her reply and congratulate her on her appointments. I am very pleased to be able to put the first question to her in her new role. In order to make debates on the Floor of the House more engaging to the public, would she consider a greater role for public petitions? They are enormously important to our constituents, and often signed by thousands of people, yet they are usually presented late at night when hon. Members are rushing from the Chamber. Will she look at what happens in Wales and Scotland and perhaps take similar measures forward here?

Harriet Harman: I thank my hon. Friend for her warm wishes. She raised a point about petitions, and I will certainly look at that. I understand that the Procedure Committee has already looked into what happens in Scotland and Wales, and I will look at that too. The Procedure Committee has considered the question of petitions and produced a substantive report, to which the Government will respond. I should like to reaffirm the point behind my hon. Friend's question. Petitions are an important link between individual constituents and their Member of Parliament, and between the people and the Government. They are also important for members of the public and for this House.

Patrick Cormack: In congratulating the right hon. Lady on her appointment, may I ask her whether she will find time for a whole-day debate on the Modernisation Committee report, either shortly before or shortly after the forthcoming recess?

Harriet Harman: I hear the hon. Gentleman's suggestion, and I know that the House will want to have enough time to debate these important topics. The House will be aware that the Prime Minister has also flagged up this important issue, and we will look at the hon. Gentleman's request sympathetically.

Fiona Mactaggart: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend to her new post; it is great to see a moderniser in this role. One of the barriers to public engagement with this place is our Order of Business. It is obscure, to put it politely. In her new role, will she try to create a plain English, simple version of what happens here, so that citizens can know what we are talking about and seek to influence it?

Harriet Harman: I thank my hon. Friend for her kind welcome to me in my new position. I very much agree with her comments about the Order Paper. However, it is not just members of the public who find our procedures and the Order Paper baffling; some Members of Parliament—even quite long-standing Members of Parliament—could be forgiven for not understanding them. We have to move to plain English, which is why, when publishing the draft Bill on reform of the coroners system, I made sure that we had the legalese on one side of the page and plain English on the other, and we can make progress on a number of documents in that way. It is not only the public who do not understand; many of us do not either.

Nicholas Winterton: While fully supporting the request made by the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) about the debating of petitions, may I say that the House would more adequately engage with the public if more Back Benchers were called to speak in important debates? Does the right hon. Lady not feel, therefore, that considerable thought should be given to reducing the time taken by Front Benchers?

Harriet Harman: I know that this is something that the Modernisation Committee, of which the hon. Gentleman is one of the longest-standing and most respected members, has looked into, and it has made a proposal. The previous Leader of the House said that there were many proposals in that Select Committee's report that the Government would be likely to back, and we will, therefore, issue our response shortly.

Andrew MacKinlay: May I invite the Leader of the House to discuss with the Chief Whip the notice given to Back Benchers of Statutory Instrument Committees? Often, Members are given only 48 hours' notice or less that they will serve on a Committee, which means that scrutiny is reduced to a charade. There is no earthly reason why most Government Departments could not flag up statutory instruments with two weeks' notice so that people could volunteer who were interested in the subject and in providing scrutiny. That would be one of the great innovations of—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Harriet Harman: This is something that my hon. Friend has raised before, and I am happy to engage in discussion, including with the Chief Whip, who, although he gave no sign of it, was listening acutely to what my hon. Friend said.

Theresa May: May I also welcome the right hon. and learned Lady to her new position? I am sure that, like me, she will find it an enjoyable and satisfying role, and I look forward to working with her to protect the interests of the House and of all hon. Members.
	It is, of course, important for our democracy that the public find debates in Parliament more engaging, but does the right hon. and learned Lady agree that the public will be more engaged with parliamentary debate if they think that they can trust politicians? For example, during the Labour deputy leadership campaign, the new part-time Leader of the House said "I agree" that the Government should apologise for the Iraq war. Now she says:
	"I've never said the government should apologise"
	over the Iraq war. Does she agree that examples such as that merely increase public cynicism and disengage people from Parliament?

Harriet Harman: If the right hon. Lady has something that has me quoted as saying that, she can send it to me. It is a pity, when we need to work closely together in the interests of the House, which is important for both sides and for democracy, that she should make that point. I would welcome her sending me any quote that said that. None the less, I look forward to working with her and with Opposition Members to make sure that the House works better. We need strong government, but strong government works better when it is held to account by a strong Parliament, and that is what I aim to achieve.

HOUSE OF COMMONS COMMISSION

The hon. Member for North Devon, representing the House of Commons Commission was asked—

Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill

Norman Baker: What assessment the Commission has made of the implications of the terms of the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill for the exercise of its responsibilities; and if he will make a statement.

Nick Harvey: The Commission has not made any such assessment. However, the Members Estimate Committee, as its minutes published on the internet show, decided on 29 January that the publication scheme for information about Members' allowances that has operated for the past three years would continue, notwithstanding any change in the law that might arise from the Bill. On 21 May, the Committee reaffirmed its commitment to making sure that the public are properly informed about Parliament, not least through the publication scheme.

Norman Baker: My hon. Friend will know that the information tribunal recently upheld a request that I made for information that the Commission had fought tooth and nail. As part of that process, it became apparent that the House of Commons Commission had resisted almost every request for embarrassing information. Does he agree that it is time for the Commission to examine its answering practices to ensure that it is compliant with the Freedom of Information Act 2000?

Nick Harvey: The Commission is not the body responsible for determining responses to such cases. My hon. Friend is mistaken in saying that we have not been replying: more than a third of such applications have been granted immediately. I understand that a tribunal judgment is awaited in one pending case and that options in relation to another will be considered as soon as possible.

LEADER OF THE HOUSE

The Leader of the House was asked—

Oral Statements

Peter Bone: If she will bring forward proposals to prevent Ministers briefing the media on the contents of oral statements before making those statements in the House.

Harriet Harman: The ministerial code makes it clear that
	"when Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, in Parliament."
	I strongly support that principle. As the Prime Minister said at the weekend, Parliament should hear the contents of statements before the media do.

Peter Bone: I welcome the Leader of the House's comments, but is she aware that two statements that are to be made this week—one tomorrow by the Prime Minister on the constitution, and another on Wednesday on health—have been leaked to the press in advance of Members of this House hearing them?

Harriet Harman: I do not think that the contents of the statements have been given to the press in advance—and I say to Members that it is important that they attend the Chamber to hear the contents of statements. In my view, whether it is announced outside the House that there will be a statement is of less importance than some other issues. The public should be made aware that there will be a statement, but the contents of the statement must be made to the House first, because the Executive is accountable to Members of this House and they should be the first people to ask questions of Ministers, rather than journalists and broadcasters.

David Heath: I welcome the right hon. and learned Lady to her new post. Her predecessor was firm about Ministers abiding by the ministerial code of conduct, but is there not now a strong case for strengthening the code, for stopping it being under the sole jurisdiction of the Prime Minister, and for introducing in addition a code for Cabinet Government that respects the role of Cabinet Ministers within Cabinet?

Harriet Harman: The issues that I as Leader of the House must address include ensuring the following: that there is the right relationship between Ministers and this House; that Members have an opportunity generally to raise issues of concern to their constituents; and that Ministers with responsibility for matters come to this House and give an account of themselves. The other issues raised are, perhaps, not ones for me to address.

Counter-terrorism

Jacqui Smith: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the weekend's events. First and foremost, I am sure that all Members agree that our top priority must be the success of the investigation and any subsequent prosecution. For that reason, we will all want to avoid speculating about the details of what is still a fast-moving investigation.
	The facts as they have been reported to me by the police and other agencies are as follows. In the early hours of 29 June, an ambulance crew reported a suspicious Mercedes vehicle outside a nightclub in the Haymarket in central London. The vehicle contained significant amounts of petrol, gas cylinders and nails. Explosives officers from the Metropolitan police counter terrorism command were called and manually disabled the means of detonation. During the course of their investigation on Friday, police learned of a second Mercedes vehicle that was issued with a parking ticket at about 2.30 am on 29 June. The car was parked in Cockspur street, London, close to the location of the first vehicle. The second vehicle was taken to a pound in Hyde Park at about 3.30 am that day. The vehicle contained similar materials to those found in the first, including a significant amount of fuel, gas canisters and a quantity of nails. As with the first device, the vehicle was swiftly made safe by explosives officers. Police soon confirmed that the vehicles were linked. Further examination will reveal additional detail about the damage that the devices might have caused if detonated, but at this stage police believe they were potentially viable devices that could have caused significant injury or loss of life.
	At 3.15 pm on 30 June, a Jeep Cherokee drove into a front door at the check-in area of the terminal building at Glasgow airport and caught fire on impact. One member of the public sustained minor injuries in the immediate aftermath of the incident. Police have confirmed that the incident at the airport was linked to the vehicles discovered in London. Investigations into these incidents have involved police forces across the United Kingdom. To date, six individuals have been arrested in connection with the events: one at Glasgow airport, a further two in Glasgow, two in Staffordshire—north of junction 16 on the M6—and one in Liverpool. One further individual of interest remains in a critical condition in hospital. Searches have already been carried out in at least 19 locations, but as I have already said, this is a fast-moving investigation.
	I am sure that the House will want to join me in thanking all those involved in the response to these incidents: the ambulance crew, whose vigilance potentially averted an attack; the police, particularly the explosives officers who manually disabled the device in the Haymarket; and the Security Service. In addition, the response from the public and the business community, including staff at airports, has been excellent in support of the police and other emergency services. I would also like to thank colleagues in Scotland and, internationally, in the United States and in Europe for their messages and offers of support.
	Since Friday morning, the Government have held four meetings of Cobra, which were chaired by the Prime Minister and me and attended by ministerial colleagues from key Government Departments, and the police and intelligence agencies. Our priority has been to co-ordinate the necessary responses to protect the public.
	Turning now to that response under way across the country, the police have substantially stepped up protective security measures, including: high-visibility patrols, including armed response vehicles; the increased use of stop-and-search powers for vehicles and pedestrians; and increased physical protection around airport terminal buildings, including tighter controls on access roads and the installation of new barriers, in conjunction with airport operators and the Department for Transport. As ever, these measures are designed to maximise public safety while minimising disruption to normal life. This action supplements the substantial programme of work already under way to protect high-risk locations. Police counter-terrorism security advisers have already advised a range of crowded places in recent months, including over 450 major sporting venues and around 400 shopping centres.
	As the House will be aware, the UK national threat level was raised from severe to critical on Saturday 30 June by the joint terrorism analysis centre. JTAC sets threat levels based on a comprehensive analysis of all intelligence relating to international terrorism.
	Terrorism is a serious threat to us all. We must ensure that our resources, capability and legislation support our common endeavour to defend the shared values of this country from terror. To that end, we have doubled expenditure on counter-terrorism since September 2001. Work as part of the current comprehensive spending review will further assess the expenditure necessary. We have started a full consultative review of counter-terrorism legislation, with a view to a Bill later this year. This process will continue. We have refocused the Home Office, developed the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism and established a weekly security board, which I chair, to co-ordinate the efforts of key Departments and agencies. Across Government, Ministers will work together to oversee the delivery of this complex package of measures.
	Let us be clear: terrorists are criminals whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religious backgrounds. Terrorists attack the values that are shared by all law-abiding citizens. As a Government, as communities and as individuals we need to ensure that the message of the terrorists is rejected. I very much welcome the strong messages of condemnation that we have heard throughout the weekend from community leaders across the country. It is through our unity that the terrorists will eventually be defeated.
	In closing my statement, I would also like to express my admiration and thanks to members of the public in this country, in all our communities, for their patience and measured response to these events. My aim as Home Secretary is to allow the British public to live their lives as they would wish, within the law. The fact that people have been prepared to go about those lives as normally as possible this weekend sends the strongest message to those who wish to destroy our way of life and our freedoms that we will not be intimidated by terror.

David Davis: May I start by welcoming the Home Secretary to her new post, especially in these uniquely difficult circumstances? She has handled this entire affair to date with a calmness and dignity on which I congratulate her.
	I join the Home Secretary and offer the thanks and congratulations of the Opposition to our emergency and security services for their actions in stopping these evil acts, which were planned with the clear aim of taking possibly hundreds of innocent lives. Without the keenly observant eye of one ambulance crew and the rapid response of our police force and bomb disposal crews, we could have been discussing a major tragedy today.
	I wish to single out for praise the civilians who intervened to support the police at Glasgow airport. Without their action in helping to subdue a subject, in circumstances of violence and extreme risk, there might have been a much worse tragedy. In these days, when the word "hero" is bandied around for the most minor of achievements, a real hero is someone who runs towards danger while others run away, and who puts their life at risk to help others. These people did that, and I formally ask the Government to consider recognising their action appropriately.
	All that being said, we have been very, very lucky: only the actions of a few people, fortuitously in the right place at the right time, prevented us from facing more than one major loss of life in the past three days. Today is a day for unity, not for criticism, so I have only two questions—of which I gave the Home Secretary notice over the weekend.
	On 22 April, a newspaper carried a report produced by JTAC that predicted a high risk of an attack at the handover from the previous Prime Minister to the current one. Despite that, the threat level was not raised above severe, which is the level at which it stands most of the time. Why was that, and what were the implications for the police forces and security agencies of that lower level?
	Once alerted to the threat, it is clear that the agencies responded remarkably quickly. Although numerous threats have been foiled, on which they deserve our heartfelt congratulations, we must face the fact that three attempted atrocities have occurred without warning. That means that the Home Secretary will have the difficult task of reviewing the strategy and resourcing of the entire counter-terrorist effort. If that leads to a significant increase in the size of the single intelligence budget, and associated police budgets, in the current comprehensive spending review, that decision will have the Opposition's clear support.
	Over the weekend, the Prime Minister said:
	"The message that's got to come out from the British people is that as one we will not yield, not be intimidated. And we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life".
	We agree. But we should remember that the liberty of the subject is the defining characteristic of the British way of life. So we should not give it up without very good cause indeed.
	I am very pleased that the current Prime Minister and the current Home Secretary have not reacted to this very real threat with hasty or knee-jerk responses. Handling this enemy will take very cool judgment, very careful analysis, and very thorough planning if we are to defeat them without giving up what we all hold dear. This will take a long time, and will need co-operation between the Government and Opposition—a process that has already started.
	Let me conclude by repeating what I said on 7 July 2005. It was true then, and it is true now, and I see the Prime Minister nodding. Whatever the origin and whatever the motive of the terrorism that walks our streets,
	"our response will be the same—the British people will not be cowed and the terrorists will not win."—[ Official Report, 7 July 2005; Vol. 436, c. 466.]

Jacqui Smith: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his words of welcome and support. I very much appreciated, too, the support he showed me as I briefed him over the weekend. I strongly agree about the bravery of members of the public, alongside members of the emergency services, and I shall certainly look carefully at his suggestion about how we can recognise that bravery.
	The right hon. Gentleman raised a particular point about press reports of JTAC analysis. Just as we must avoid speculation about individual details of this operation, so too must we resist the temptation to draw conclusions from leaks of individual bits of intelligence analysis. It is JTAC's job to look at all available intelligence from home and abroad over a period of time to assess the threat level. The fact that the threat level for the past year has been severe is a symbol or representation of the serious level of threat that the intelligence suggested we face.
	I would have a small disagreement with the right hon. Gentleman about it being a routine threat level—it is not; it represents a sustained level of threat and police and other activity has been commensurate with that.
	I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman expressed support for increased funding. The doubling of such expenditure since 9/11 has of course enabled us to double the number of agents in the security services and to provide important support for counter-terrorism work in the police force, too.
	Once again, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his words; it is most certainly my intention to continue this important work in co-operation not only with Opposition Members but with everybody else in the country who can help us to tackle the threat of terrorism.

Nicholas Clegg: I am grateful to the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement and for the updates she provided over the past few days as events unfolded. I welcome her to her new position and recognise that she had to deal with some early challenges within hours of taking it up.
	I wholeheartedly join the right hon. Lady in recognising the vigilance of the public and the intelligence services, and the valour of members of the public, emergency services and police. That vigilance and valour, combined with an almost uncanny stroke of good luck, appear to have helped to avert the worst this time. Naturally, I, too, am delighted that neither she nor the Prime Minister appears, at the moment at least, to be invoking the events of recent days as a reason to argue immediately for new legislation. Does she agree that legislation is only ever a small part of our collective response and that excessive or ill-considered legislation can increase feelings of alienation and resentment, within precisely the communities we need on our side?
	I strongly agree with the Home Secretary that unity is essential, not only to thwart criminal extremists themselves but to help to enhance a feeling of solidarity between and within our various communities. Does she agree that the long-term dilemma facing us all is how we can deal with the grievances of terrorist extremists without in any way legitimising them? Although there is never any excuse for such violence, does she agree that we need a calm, candid approach to our policies at home and abroad, to work out how best to bolster moderate Muslim opinion and successfully isolate the views of the criminal extremists, as the Prime Minister suggested this weekend?
	Finally, in the light of the attack at Glasgow airport, will the Home Secretary confirm that pilot studies are under way for installing new vehicle access barriers at Victoria and Waterloo railway stations? In February, I asked what steps were being taken to roll out those pilots at other stations and airports and was told that a report would be completed in April, but I do not think it has yet been published. Can the Home Secretary confirm that the report is now complete and that it will be acted on with redoubled urgency?

Jacqui Smith: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments and the support he showed during our conversations over the weekend for the response of the emergency services.
	I made it clear in my statement that I certainly do not see legislation as being the sole way in which we will tackle the threat of terrorism. Nevertheless, it is a very important way to address terrorism. That is why, as I suggested in my statement, I will take forward my predecessor's proposals with respect to the counter-terrorism Bill that we hope to introduce later this year.
	On the hon. Gentleman's comments about the way in which we deal with extremism, I supported his second point, but I did not support the argument that it seemed that he was nearly making—that somehow or other a grievance, real or otherwise, could ever justify a murderous activity. If he was arguing—as I think he was in the second part of his remarks—that the task for us all, in all communities, is to isolate the extremists who propagate and carry out terrorism, I strongly agree with him. That is why work has already started in the Department for Communities and Local Government. Working with my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the Foreign Secretary, I want to renew and bolster that work, which will be crucial in addressing the threat of terrorism.
	There is not a single solution to terrorism. That is why I emphasised the need for resources, capability and legislation and the need to win the battle of ideas in order to tackle terrorism. On the specific point about security in train stations, some additional protective security measures, especially high-visibility policing, are being taken in some of our major transport hubs. I will certainly go back to the report that the hon. Gentleman mentions, pursue it, and perhaps contact him on the issue.

Jim Sheridan: Twenty-three hours and 59 minutes after the horrific attack on Saturday, Glasgow airport was fully operational. No doubt that is down to the hard work of the staff, the management and the emergency services, but it is also down to the general public, who were extremely tolerant and understanding. Many of them will be denied compensation for the loss of their holidays, so will my right hon. Friend use her good offices to encourage the insurance companies and the travel agents to look sympathetically at any claims that may come from those people?
	Finally, I travelled through Glasgow airport today and the public and the staff there had a clear message for the people of the UK and beyond. It was a simple request: "Will you all come back again?"

Jacqui Smith: I completely agree with the points that my hon. Friend makes about the considerable hard work and stoicism shown by the staff and others at Glasgow airport, and I join him in congratulating them on that. I have no doubt that both the travel and insurance companies will have heard the plea that he makes on behalf of his constituents and others and I am sure that they will bear that carefully in mind. His point about returning to Scotland is important. I know that Visit Scotland is working hard to demonstrate that Scotland is open for business as usual. Given what a very beautiful country it is, I am sure that many people will want to take the opportunity to visit it as soon as possible.

Mark Field: May I associate myself with the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) in relation to the Home Secretary? It must be a tumultuous time to be taking over the post. For my part, I think that she and the Prime Minister have spoken constructively, with a firm eye to the future—we obviously need to look at these things in an entirely different light, given some of the mistakes that have been made over the past five or six years on community matters.
	Both the Haymarket and Cockspur street lie in my constituency, which also contains many of the country's highest profile terrorist targets, and we must not forget that many residents live cheek by jowl with the embassies and other establishments in central London that are possible targets for car bombers. I appreciate that it is still very early days, but is the Home Secretary giving serious consideration to setting up a ring of steel to protect residents and businesses in the west end similar to that which has operated in the City of London over the past decade and a half?

Jacqui Smith: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I commend his constituents who live and work in that area of London for the way in which they responded to this weekend's events. Of course, I would be happy to listen to any of his or his constituents' ideas about how we can ensure their security. Immediately following Friday morning's events, the police increased what they call protective security with high-visibility policing in the area. On threat levels, we will need to keep what is appropriate under review. High-visibility policing, the sort of measures that are already in place and vigilance, which is an important role for those who live and work in the area, are the most appropriate ways to address the threat.

George Howarth: I, too, welcome my right hon. Friend to her new and awesome responsibilities and congratulate her on the calm and effective way in which she has carried them out over the past few days. I also welcome the fact that she continues to review counter-terrorism legislation. May I express the hope that should it prove necessary to extend the time for which a suspect may be held for questioning, she will bring measures forward without any hesitation?

Jacqui Smith: I thank my right hon. Friend. As my predecessor made clear at the beginning of June, we want to take forward proposals for the counter-terrorism Bill on the basis of consultation. He and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made it clear that there might well be a case for examining the amount of time for which we are able to detain people pre-charge so that we ensure that there is the very best opportunity to bring successful convictions. However, if we were to go down that route, we would do so on the basis of consultation, a careful examination of the evidence, and ensuring that there was appropriate scrutiny.

James Clappison: Whatever the circumstances of present events, is the Home Secretary aware that in serious criminal cases involving terrorism that have recently concluded, there has been a strong connection between serious offences and the influence and transmission of extreme ideological religious views? Will she make countering that baleful influence a priority?

Jacqui Smith: I agree that, in some cases, the transmission of what I would call extreme views—full stop—has led to at least part of the ongoing terror threat. As I suggested earlier, it is the responsibility of not only the Government but community leaders and others to isolate those extreme violent views, wherever they occur, and to ensure that we bolster the vast majority of all our communities who share British values, a respect for law in this country and all our concerns about countering terror.

Tony Wright: If an important part of being British is agreeing about how we disagree, does the Home Secretary agree that we must ask the British Muslim community to condemn this barbarism without any equivocation or caveat—without any ifs and buts—because it is our only real ally against it?

Jacqui Smith: I think that the support from our communities has actually been very positive. Whoever was involved in these attacks—of course, we do not know who that was—I acknowledge that those in our Muslims communities may feel that they are under the spotlight. In fact I was encouraged by the reaction from the Muslim community over the weekend. For example, Khurshid Ahmed, the chair of the British Muslim Forum, expressed
	"support to the Government in raising the threat level",
	and
	"pledged full support and co-operation...in tackling this menace".
	Haras Rafiq, the chair of the Sufi Muslim Council, called for communities to
	"make a concerted effort to root out the dregs of society who commit such horrific actions, whose aim is nothing but to terrorise innocent human beings",
	and asserted that
	"such actions have nothing to do with Islam."
	Those are strong positive messages and we need to work with members of the Muslim community who express views like that to isolate the very small minorities in any community who want to propagate hate and terror.

Derek Conway: Is the Home Secretary aware that extremist fundamentalists have described the attack on the "Tiger Tiger" nightclub as an attack on slags? My daughter was there that night at a party of 18-year-old girls from a convent school who were celebrating the end of A-levels and an 18-year-old girl's birthday. Dealing with a mindset that describes people enjoying themselves in London in such a way shows the challenge that this remarkably steady Home Secretary has to face. Does she share my utter gratitude and that of the parents of all the girls from St. Mary's school, Ascot, whose daughters would not be with them today if it were not for the outstanding bravery of the bomb disposal officer who manually tackled the bomb? It is difficult to comprehend that bravery and it is even more difficult to express our thanks properly.

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman does a very good job of expressing our thanks and the concerns and fears of those who had family, or knew of other people, involved in any of these incidents. He rightly identifies the need for us to be able to continue whatever we want to do in our everyday life, whether that involves attending nightclubs or going on holiday, free from the fear of terrorism and refusing to be intimidated by it.

Khalid Mahmood: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her new post and on all the steadfast work that she has done over the past few days. She will know that yesterday the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Hazel Blears), and I were in Birmingham, where 5,000 people from more than 250 mosques have congregated over the past two days. At that meeting, all of them unreservedly condemned this absolutely barbaric attack. Does she agree that that is the attitude of the majority of the Muslim community, that any policy grievances that anybody might have are not an excuse to carry out such an attack, and that we must tackle those people who continue to say otherwise?

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I understand that it was a very good event that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and my hon. Friend attended. That is precisely the sort of positive work between and within communities that is an effective way to tackle terrorism, and I thank my hon. Friend for his comments today.

Paul Goodman: I represent the largest number of Muslim voters of any official Opposition Member of Parliament. Following the point just made, the Islamic religious institutions in my constituency condemn terrorism absolutely. Does the Home Secretary agree that the main driver of the threat that faces us is not foreign policy, as some have intimated, but the perversion of a great religion into a separatist political ideology? Does she also agree that that ideology must be challenged, confronted and rooted out in all our communities if the challenge to our way of life is to be defeated?

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point from what is obviously a position of knowledge. I welcome the points that he makes about the strong message from the Muslim community; he is precisely right. Any attempt to identify a murderous ideology with a great faith such as Islam is wrong, and needs to be denied. That approach needs to be supported by all right-thinking people in the community—Muslim and otherwise.

Paul Farrelly: May I also congratulate the police on the speed of their response? In my area that includes Staffordshire police, who have been working with the west midlands counter-terrorism unit and the Metropolitan police. I visited Chesterton in my constituency this morning, where two of those arrested rented a property. I spoke to the police yesterday and again today, and I know that Staffordshire police are holding various meetings with the local community throughout north Staffordshire tomorrow. My understanding is that none of those suspected originate from our local communities. May I urge my right hon. Friend to ensure that at this difficult time the police and all agencies continue the balanced approach, firm but not alarmist, in the interests of community cohesion in north Staffordshire and everywhere else in the United Kingdom?

Jacqui Smith: It is, of course, not possible at present for us to know the origins or details of those who have been arrested, but I strongly agree with my hon. Friend in the approach that he identified. If there is anything that I or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government can do to support communities in his constituency at this difficult time, I would be happy to do it.

Angus Robertson: At this difficult time, may I commend the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister on their new responsibilities and for the excellent co-operation between the UK Government and the Scottish Government? Since the attack in Glasgow and the attempted attacks in London, nobody should be in any doubt that terrorism is completely unjustified. The Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru join all other parties in condemning the attempts to kill or maim innocent people and undermine our democratic values. In recognising the integral, important and positive role played by the Muslim community in modern Scotland, does the Home Secretary share my appreciation of the strong condemnation across society as a whole of the latest outrages?

Jacqui Smith: Yes; I join the hon. Gentleman in thanking the Scottish Executive and other officials in Scotland for the co-operation that there has been on what is clearly a pan-UK incident, which we need to work together to tackle. My conversations with the Justice Minister and the First Minister have been important in developing that understanding, and I entirely agree with the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about the strong condemnation from the community, and welcome it very much.

Sandra Osborne: May I add my appreciation to the Muslim community in Scotland and its representatives for their immediate and unequivocal condemnation of the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport? I welcome the doubling of resources for counter-terrorism since 2001. What resources specifically have been allocated to Scotland, and have there been resources in addition to the block grant through the Barnett formula?

Jacqui Smith: The responsibility for counter-terrorism is not devolved, so the doubling of those resources, particularly through the resources that have gone to the security service will, rightly, have benefited my hon. Friend's constituents and those throughout Scotland.

William Cash: The Home Secretary rightly said that there must be compliance with the law, but the question is: which law? I am sure she will understand that the root trouble in many cases—for example, with control orders, with seven terror suspects having disappeared under what are described as ineffective control orders—has led to a position in which the judiciary is making basic and fundamental public security decisions and has effectively taken those away from the Home Secretary on behalf of the Government. Will the Home Secretary, in her consultation and possibly earlier, please legislate to make certain that human life comes before human rights in this context, and that we legislate at Westminster, irrespective of the Human Rights Act, in order to ensure that we put the public safety first?

Jacqui Smith: I very much look forward to the hon. Gentleman's contribution to the consultation on anti-terrorism legislation. It is a full and open consultation and all views will be welcomed. The hon. Gentleman is, I think, referring to the European convention and he is, of course, aware, because I have heard it described from the Dispatch Box relatively recently, of the action that the Government are taking in the context of some cases currently being pursued, to make the case that it is possible both to fulfil the conditions of article 3, and alongside that, to recognise the need for national security and public safety, as he put it.

Gavin Strang: Does my right hon. Friend agree that because even a primitive car bomb can inflict colossal carnage, and because those responsible are clearly going for centres where there are large numbers of people, there are major implications for how we organise, manage and design major airports and railway stations in the future?

Jacqui Smith: My right hon. Friend is right that we need carefully to consider the design of major transport hubs and other crowded places in both the short term and the longer term. The need to think about protective security is why the police have already begun to offer advice not only to large transport hubs, but as I have suggested, to sports stadiums, shopping centres and other places where there are likely to be large numbers of people. He is undoubtedly right that as methods of terror evolve, so must the means by which we protect our people against them.

Julian Lewis: In his major speech on terrorism last October and again over the weekend, the Prime Minister drew a justified comparison between the successful efforts to isolate and undermine the ideas of militant communism during the cold war and the effort that needs to be made now in respect of the doctrines that motivate such attacks. Will the Home Secretary tell us whether the research, information and communications unit, which it was announced in March would be set up for such purposes in the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, is in fact up and running, and whether the new Minister with responsibility for home security, Sir Alan West, whose appointment I warmly welcome, will have a role in connection with that unit?

Jacqui Smith: I can confirm that the RICU, to which the hon. Gentleman has referred, has been set up. It is in its early days, but it has been set up within the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism. My hon. Friend the Minister for Security, Counter Terrorism and Police, Admiral Sir Alan West, and I will take responsibility for security and counter-terrorism. We will push forward on the need to counter the destructive ideology which the hon. Gentleman has rightly mentioned, and on all other elements of our counter-terror work, too.

Eric Illsley: A few months ago, I tabled questions in support of moves by the British Compressed Gases Association to try to restrict illegal sales of gas cylinders, which are usually second-hand sales, particularly on auction sites such as eBay. Unfortunately, such sales are not policed, and the association wanted to tighten the regulations surrounding such sales for a number of reasons, including the prevention of the use of such cylinders in terrorist attacks. Will the Home Secretary meet me, any colleagues whom she feels are appropriate and the chief executive of the association to try to move that issue forward?

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend has made an important point. As I have suggested, once the immediate investigation of the incidents is successfully concluded, it will be important to examine in detail the lessons that we can learn, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and I will want carefully to consider my hon. Friend's point.

John Butterfill: The Home Secretary is probably aware that some press reports have indicated that at least one of the people involved in those attempted atrocities was subject to a control order and that they are one of several people in that category who have absconded. Does she share the view of my constituents and many hon. Members that it is puzzling that the British judiciary tends to interpret the Human Rights Act 1998 in a different way from its counterparts elsewhere in Europe, particularly the French? Even when there is the prospect of deporting people to a jurisdiction that is prepared to guarantee that those people will not be subject to torture, the death sentence or anything like that, it is still not carried out. Does there not need to be consistency in how such multinational legislation is interpreted, and should not the Government take steps to ensure consistency of interpretation across signatories to the European convention on human rights?

Jacqui Smith: I started my statement by emphasising the need not to speculate at this time on the nature of those involved in the incidents. I shall stick by that self-denying ordinance, which I think is correct, but no doubt there will be ample opportunity during my time at the Dispatch Box for us to discuss control orders and a whole range of other issues.

David Marshall: My right hon. Friend is no doubt aware that hundreds of passengers at Glasgow airport were confined aboard aircraft on taxiways and runways for up to seven or eight hours. According to reports, they included children from a school for those with special needs, elderly and disabled people and very young children. While recognising the demands of security, will she consider what more can be done to alleviate the distress caused to such passengers in any similar situation in the future?

Jacqui Smith: Although I am very sympathetic about what must have been a very difficult situation for those passengers, the authorities were absolutely right, certainly in those very early stages, to put the security of people travelling into and out of Glasgow airport at the heart of their response.

Bernard Jenkin: I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. Will she enlarge on the timetable for future legislation? Would that be a Bill in the new Session, and would it leave time for draft legislation to be presented to the House, perhaps even before the rising of the House this month? May I reinforce the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis)—that we do not want to finish up in opposing Lobbies on measures of such importance, but that that depends on a proper understanding of what the Government are seeking to achieve, a proper understanding of the threat, and proper legal coherence in the legislation presented to the House?

Jacqui Smith: I am recently enough a business manager not to upset my erstwhile colleagues by making rash statements about when legislation will or will not be introduced. I repeat that it is my intention—as my predecessor as Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), announced at the beginning of June—to introduce counter-terrorism legislation later this year, but that will be after a process of consultation and after the Select Committee on Home Affairs and the Joint Committee on Human Rights have had an opportunity to examine our proposals. That will include an ability to share the detail of those proposals with Opposition parties and others. I certainly intend to continue with that commitment made by my predecessor.

Emily Thornberry: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend to her new post. Is she aware that, despite the shrill voices to the contrary, her resolute approach to the possibility of introducing new counter-terrorism legislation and to ensuring that that is done in a thoughtful and careful manner is also warmly welcomed?

Jacqui Smith: I thank my hon. Friend for those words. It is certainly my aim, as it was having re-read the statement that my right hon. Friend made on 7 June, to carry forward plans for new counter-terrorism legislation on the basis of building consensus, as far as possible, and consulting as widely as possible on that.

Julian Brazier: I, too, congratulate the Home Secretary and all those involved in dealing with all three incidents. I wish to raise a narrow issue of airport security, on which I have had a series of exchanges with BAA. Queues of people waiting for security apparatus are choice targets in Iraq and a number of other areas. With the holiday season almost upon us, may I urge the Home Secretary to tell airport operators that allowing large queues to develop at security apparatus represents a huge threat to public safety?

Jacqui Smith: I am sure that airport operators will have heard the hon. Gentleman's point. As we have introduced increased security around airports in this short period, it has been important to work closely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. Work is also under way, alongside the Department for Transport, to examine the details of our implementation of security arrangements in airports. I shall bear the hon. Gentleman's comments in mind as we take that forward.

Robert Wareing: May I first congratulate my right hon. Friend on her appointment? I lived through the terror of the Blitz during the second world war and I remember the stalwart courage of the British people in defying the Nazis. They went about their lives as normally as possible. The current generation of Britons will defy the present terrorists, just as their forebears defied the Luftwaffe's terrorism. The message that the House must convey, primarily to those who are our enemies now, is that we will not tolerate the sort of activities in which they are involved and that we are as one, irrespective of our politics, in opposing them. We will support our people's indomitable spirit in opposing terrorism.

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend and I did not always see eye to eye in my previous job, but I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments today.

Shailesh Vara: I congratulate the Home Secretary on her appointment and wish her well, especially given the enormous task before her. Given the international perspective of the terror attacks, has she had any contact with overseas countries in the past three or four days? If so, which ones?

Jacqui Smith: Yes, I have had the opportunity to speak twice to my United States counterpart, Secretary Chertoff. I have also spoken to the deputy commissioner of the European Union and my Spanish counterpart. I have plans to speak to other European representatives later today and early this week. In all those conversations, the consistent messages of support and the absolute commitment to working together throughout the international community to tackle terrorism have been very encouraging.

Don Touhig: May I echo the comments of hon. Members throughout the Chamber to my right hon. Friend, and say that the calm and confident way in which she appeared on television has reassured the British people throughout our land? Everywhere I have been over the weekend, people have praised that. In her statement, she said that expenditure on counter-terrorism had doubled since 2001. Some of us believe that there should be a substantial increase in expenditure on counter-terrorism preparations. She will have much support from hon. Members of all parties in her discussions on the comprehensive spending review to secure that necessary funding.

Jacqui Smith: I thank my right hon. Friend. The increase in resources that the Government have already put in place for counter-terrorism is symbolic of the priority that we give that work. I am sure that that will continue as we go through the next comprehensive spending review.

David Jones: The attack on Glasgow airport suggests that ports and airports throughout the country are likely to continue to be terrorist targets. In the circumstances, does the Home Secretary agree that it is essential that police forces throughout the country should be able to maintain full complements of dedicated security posts? Will she work closely with police forces and police authorities to ensure that the funding regime is in place to secure that?

Jacqui Smith: Yes, I can give that commitment. It is obviously important that chief constables can make appropriate operational decisions for their areas. However, given the increased investment and reviews that are already going on, I think that I can give the hon. Gentleman that commitment.

David Winnick: I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on the manner in which she has reacted in her first few days in office. Does she agree that we all have the responsibility to remain united—as united as we are today—against these murderous psychopaths who want to bring death and destruction to our country? Will she reject once again any idea whatever that these fanatics have any genuine grievance whatever to justify inflicting such terror on our people?

Jacqui Smith: I thank my hon. Friend and I wholeheartedly agree with what he said. I am very encouraged by the clear views expressed around the House today that there is no justification for terrorism. That will continue to be my strong view.

Tobias Ellwood: What links this event to that of 9/11, Bali, Madrid and indeed 7 July is the very sad fact that all these terrorists were trained on the Pakistani-Afghan border. Does the Home Secretary agree that until we eradicate these camps, we will continue to have threats not only from home-grown terrorists but from abroad? If she does agree, what steps is she willing to take to achieve that?

Jacqui Smith: I know that the hon. Gentleman has personal experience relating to this issue. I agree that there will continue to be a need to deal with the elements that fuel terrorist activity—either domestically or internationally. There is a whole range of ways to deal with that problem, from rooting out the radicalisation of people who are likely to commit terrorist acts, through to action that we need to take with our international partners to ensure that the international inspiration for terrorism in this country is also addressed. That is why there is such strong commitment across the Government—including all my ministerial colleagues—to ensuring that we address every cause of terrorism. We are committed to achieving that.

Frank Field: May I follow up that particular question? Does the Minister recall that during the IRA bombing of this country, the then Government placed restrictions on the freedom of movement of people both ways across the Irish sea? Is she considering similar measures to restrict people from this country going to those countries where there are known terrorist training camps and—even more importantly—to prevent them from returning to these shores?

Jacqui Smith: I can tell my right hon. Friend that we do not have specific plans for putting those sorts of restrictions in place, but it is important to keep all those measures under review. That is part of what we are doing both in reviewing legislation and other work that we are taking forward.

John Redwood: Is there a danger that placing restrictions on car access to Heathrow will divert travellers and terrorist attention to the tube, where there are no body or bag searches and where there cannot be restrictions on vehicle proximity to stations?

Jacqui Smith: It is obviously the case that those people who are expert in protective security—I believe that we are very fortunate in this country in having such considerable expertise, particularly in the Metropolitan police—need to keep under review where the immediate threat is most likely to come from and the most appropriate methods for dealing with it. We also have to continue, as I suggested earlier, to adopt the most appropriate and suitably robust approach to protecting the public, while also enabling life to go on and business to be able to carry out its operations.

Elliot Morley: I, too, commend the Home Secretary for her response—and, indeed, the response at all levels—to this incident. Does she agree that, apart from the murderous intent to inflict pain and injury on innocent victims, the intention of terrorism is also to disrupt people's everyday lives and to disrupt the economy of our country? In that respect, while there must be a review of security, will she assure the House that it will be proportionate and risk based and that we will send a very clear signal to terrorists that we will not give in to terrorism at any level in this country?

Jacqui Smith: I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. He is absolutely right that, as I suggested in my statement, the strongest response to the terrorist threat is for the public to be vigilant but to carry on living their lives as law-abiding citizens, which they have the right to do in this country. All the measures that we adopt with respect to protection will take that important balance into account.

Patrick Mercer: I should like to take the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) a little further. Two years ago, the tube was attacked, and I have no doubt that it remains a vulnerable and desirable target for our enemies. A series of recommendations was made to improve tube safety, not least relating to the ability of the police and emergency workers to communicate between surface and tunnel. That is still not in place two years later. Why not?

Jacqui Smith: I know that the hon. Gentleman has considerable expertise in fighting terrorist activity. I understand that progress has been made, particularly in respect of the Airwave contract and the communications issues that he has identified. Given my relative newness to this post, however, I will write to him with more details, and talk to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport about this matter.

Tony Lloyd: I welcome my right hon. Friend to her new post. Her measured tones, and those of the Prime Minister, over the past few days have been helpful in ensuring that British Muslims know that they are not on trial as a community. That is an important message. She has emphasised that consultation on these matters will, quite rightly, take place across the Floor of the House. Will she ensure that all sectors of the British community are involved in that consultation, to avoid the kind of knee-jerk reactions that can stigmatise whole communities of British Pakistanis, British Muslims and, indeed, anyone else?

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend makes an important point. As I said earlier, regardless of who is involved in the individual incidents, I understand that, at a time like this, the Muslim community can feel under pressure as a result of the incident and the publicity around it. My hon. Friend is right to say that that places on us a responsibility to consult as widely as possible as we take forward any action, and particularly as we consider legislative options. I have emphasised the consultation that will happen in the House and in the political sphere, but he is right to say that it also needs to include representatives of all our communities and members of the public. We need to give some thought to how we can ensure that that happens.

Linda Gilroy: I join other hon. Members in welcoming the sure-footed way in which my right hon. Friend is approaching her demanding new role. In the broader review of strategy, will she take a careful look at the advice that has been given about flights over certain parts of London, including the City of London and this House, and over other symbolic sites in the country, to ensure that it meets the level of threat that is now emerging?

Jacqui Smith: It is obviously important, when considering the level of threat, to look across a whole range of sectors to determine the appropriate response. I am sure that that will be happening in the areas that my hon. Friend has referred to.

Margaret Moran: I should like to add my thanks, and those of the Muslim community leaders in my constituency, whom I met yesterday, for the calm and considered way in which the new Home Secretary has dealt with this issue. Will she join me in thanking the staff of London Luton airport and the Bedfordshire police for the speedy and effective way in which they have managed to achieve security and efficiency of flights out of that airport? She might be aware, however, that there has been a dispute over the payment of the policing of Luton airport. Will she look at that—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must stop the hon. Lady.

Jacqui Smith: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend that the work in all our airports, and all our police forces, has been exemplary. I am sure that the work at Luton airport deserves congratulation. I will undertake to look at the point that she has raised about funding. If she would like to provide me with more information about it, I will look at it in detail.

Barry Gardiner: Doubtless, consideration was given on Friday and Saturday as to whether Saturday evening's concert at Wembley organised by their Royal Highnesses in memory of their mother should go ahead or whether it was too much of a target. Absolutely the right decision was taken to ensure that it went ahead. Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking Chief Inspector Mark Toland and the Wembley police force for their sterling work in ensuring that security was of the highest level while making sure that the inconvenience to my constituents in the local area was kept to a minimum? May I also say to her—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We are running over time as it is.

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend is right. One of the tasks, of course, during the incidents was to look carefully at the events that were happening. I agree that the decision to carry on with that event, with the necessary security, was very important. It symbolised the fact that events carried on across the country, undeterred by the threat of terrorism. I was a little busy at the time, but I have the concert recorded at home and I am looking forward to having the opportunity to see it.

Keith Vaz: I join every other Member of the House in congratulating my right hon. Friend on the proper, measured and strong way in which she has dealt with the issue. She rightly said that the Muslim and Asian communities have condemned what has happened. Will she give us an assurance that she will consult them fully before any proposals are brought before the House? In particular, will she ensure that there is no adverse impact on the wider Asian community as a result of anything that she proposes in the future? Could she reiterate that this is a—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Jacqui Smith: I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. It will be a priority, as we introduce proposals and develop the legislation, to consult as widely as possible across all the communities of this country. It is precisely to be able to protect those communities that we will introduce this counter-terror legislation.

John Robertson: I join my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan) in saying how wonderfully our emergency services conducted themselves for the people not only of Glasgow, but of London, Liverpool and Cheshire—it makes me proud to be British. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that when information is given out at such times of crisis, Members of Parliament, particularly when their jurisdiction is involved, are contacted by the relevant services and by the authorities in charge of places such as airports?

Jacqui Smith: I am sure that my hon. Friend will understand that, quite often, events move very quickly, and it is necessary to put measures in place as quickly as possible, but I will certainly undertake when such events happen to do my best to keep informed, and to ask the police to keep informed, civic representatives and particularly MPs.

Floods (England)

Hilary Benn: With permission, I should like to give the House an update on the serious flooding that has affected large parts of England and which will continue to have an impact for some months to come.
	The flooding has claimed at least four lives, and the circumstances of three other reported deaths are still being investigated. I am sure the whole House would wish to express its profound sympathy to the families who have lost loved ones.
	The Environment Agency currently has in place three severe flood warnings, 25 flood warnings and 55 flood watches in Yorkshire, the midlands, Lincolnshire and elsewhere. All the severe flood warnings are on the River Don in Yorkshire, where flood waters have not yet receded, despite considerable progress as a result of pumping. More than 300 people remain in temporary shelters, although many more have had to leave their homes and are in other temporary accommodation. The Environment Agency believes that it may be some days before the full all-clear can be given in those areas, and I should like to echo its warnings about the dangers of people going into flood waters unnecessarily. Police presence has been stepped up to counter fears about theft from properties, although, thankfully, there have been few actual cases.
	Across the country significant efforts have been made by the Environment Agency and emergency services, with military assistance, to avert the risk of flooding to properties. The House will be aware that pumping of water from the Ulley reservoir has been under way for a number of days and has significantly reduced the risk of the dam collapsing. Work continues to shore up a flood bank to protect properties at Bentley, near Doncaster, and to remove water at Toll Bar and in Hull and the surrounding areas. In many areas, the worst of the immediate flooding has passed and clean-up operations are well in hand.
	Fortunately, the heavy rainfall at the weekend has not added significantly to the flooding, and the weather forecast for the next few days is consistent with continued falls in river levels. However, further heavy rainfall is predicted for next weekend and I must caution that, with saturated ground and very high groundwater levels in some areas, further flooding might occur. The Environment Agency is working hard to ensure that all flood defence works and control structures are fully operational, including flood forecasting and warnings. Water levels in flood storage areas are being reduced as quickly as possible to allow capacity for any future flood flows. The emergency services are fully prepared to respond to any future emergency, with military support as required. I encourage the public to seek advice and to use the Environment Agency floodline or website.
	Most electricity and gas supplies have been restored, although property-by-property checks are needed where there has been flood damage. Some flooded sewerage plants might remain out of action for several weeks, although steps are being taken to minimise pollution. Many schools are reopening, although some will be out of action for some time to come.
	The Environment Agency knows of at least 3,500 properties that have been flooded from main rivers in south and west Yorkshire, Humberside, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire and elsewhere. The final figure will be higher. When account is taken of flooding from surface water that has been unable to escape into drains and from groundwater, the total number of properties affected could be over 20,000. The Association of British Insurers estimates that the costs of flood-related claims could run to £1 billion. The costs to local authorities of responding to the flooding will be covered by the long-established Bellwin arrangements. More severely affected homes and businesses will take a considerable time to recover. Experience from the Carlisle flood suggests that some properties will not be fully habitable for many months, and that will mean that those affected will have to be temporarily rehoused.
	I am sure that the House will want to pay tribute to the continuing heroic efforts of the many who have responded so magnificently to this exceptional rainfall. They include the staff of the fire, ambulance, police and other rescue services, our armed forces, local authorities, the Environment Agency, the voluntary sector and local communities—neighbour helping neighbour. I appreciate how hard everyone has worked; some people are very tired. I am grateful to them, and for the help they have received from other regions.
	As the flood waters recede, we will move into the recovery effort, which will need support from across central, regional and local government, businesses and voluntary organisations. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has today agreed that the Minister of State at her Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (John Healey), will take the lead on this matter. He will co-ordinate Government support for the local authorities and other agencies which will deal with this major task. Both my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend will be visiting affected areas later this week and will keep the House fully informed.
	There will be lessons to be learned, and we will learn them. However, one thing was already clear before the recent floods occurred: the Government have always recognised the need to spend more on flood defence because of changes in climate, and we have increased spending from £307 million in 1996-97 to more than £600 million this year. I can today inform the House that we will further increase spending across Government on flood-risk management and defences to £800 million in 2010-11. I will, of course, keep the House informed if there are any further significant developments.

Peter Ainsworth: Before I welcome the Secretary of State to his new brief—and welcome his team, too—may I join him in offering my sincere condolences to the families and friends of those who, tragically, lost their lives in the floods, and in congratulating the heroic efforts of those in the emergency services, the NHS and local authorities who worked so hard to deal with what was a very difficult situation? Opposition Members also send our heartfelt sympathy to those whose homes have been ruined, whose businesses have been wrecked and whose lives have been put on hold by these wretched events.
	The Secretary of State is most welcome to his new role. He has a reputation as a thoughtful member of the Government and he will need to put on his thinking cap at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. As he has already learned, it is one of those Departments where events have a nasty way of leaping up and grabbing the agenda. What has happened is particularly hard for him, as his constituency has been severely affected by the floods.
	Where the Secretary of State and his team do the right thing, we will offer our wholehearted support, as there is a lot at stake in respect of the DEFRA agenda—too much for there to be party politics. We will offer our support when they do the right thing but, given what is at stake, we will not hesitate to hold them to account. We are not interested in playing the blame game on flooding—bad things just happen. The most that we can ever hope for is that we minimise the chances of their happening, and respond effectively and efficiently when they do.
	Last week, the Chief Fire Officers Association raised a couple of issues. First, it warned that, despite its essential role in managing localised disasters, the fire service currently has no legal duties regarding flooding. This, the association warned, can make it difficult to get things done as quickly as it would like. Do recent events give the Secretary of State cause to rethink that? Does he think that there may be a case for involving the fire service in flood management on a statutory basis?
	Secondly, the CFOA suggested that too many agencies were involved in handling the floods, and said that that had caused some confusion and overlap. A flood support centre has now been set up in Worcester to co-ordinate fire and rescue resources nationwide. Is that likely to be a permanent fixture, or is it merely a temporary arrangement?
	Although the emergency services have done a sterling job, the damages, as the Secretary of State said, are still huge. The Association of British Insurers puts the cost of flood damage at £1 billion. Last week, the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor promised to inform me of his estimate of the value of uninsured losses. Is the Secretary of State now in a position to tell us what that figure is and how it divides regionally? What support are the Government able to give those who are under-insured or uninsured? How much money has been allocated under the social fund in respect of these events, and how will it be distributed? What qualification criteria will be attached to any grants made? How much money is available to local authorities under the Bellwin scheme? Has the Secretary of State made an application to the EU solidarity fund to help with the restoration of vital infrastructure?
	Turning to the question of flood risk and prevention, the Environment Agency has been warning for some years that increases in the amount of cash for flood defences have not kept up with increases in the rate of flooding. Indeed, according to some reports, cash increases have not even kept up with the real world. Reports that the proposed flood schemes in Leeds and York were shelved because of funding constraints are of particular concern. How many flood protection schemes have been shelved or postponed in the past two years because of funding problems?
	We know that last year, because of financial difficulties at DEFRA, it slashed £200 million from its agencies' budgets, including £15 million from flood defence work at the Environment Agency. According to the Environment Agency, that move was "tactical and opportunistic". Can the new Secretary of State guarantee that under his management the agency's flood defence work will be accorded a proper priority? I welcome his announcement this afternoon on increasing the budget for flood management in two years' time. Would his Department's funding problems have been so severe if the new Prime Minister, when Chancellor, had not repeatedly dipped into the Treasury's contingency budget?
	Does the Secretary of State not think that a good way of minimising damage from flooding might be to avoid building on flood plains in the first place? Half the post-war building in the UK is on flood plains, and a lot of new building is destined to be so built. At present, a quarter of all planning applications opposed by the Environment Agency still go ahead. Does he regard that as acceptable? As the Secretary of State knows, the Environment Agency was given new powers in January to refer such developments to him. Will he do everything in his power to see that the agency's concerns are acted on by the Department for Communities and Local Government?
	Finally, although we cannot prove that this year's weather is due to climate change, all the expert advice suggests that climate change will increase the risk of flooding in the United Kingdom—by 20 times, according to the Government's own foresight report. Will the Secretary of State use the forthcoming climate change Bill to commit to an annual report on climate change adaptation measures? As the Stern review has stressed, the costs of dealing with the consequences of climate change will escalate each year, as will the costs of mitigating it. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need a step change in the approach that we take towards flood defences? Is this not a classic case of a stitch in time?

Hilary Benn: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very kind words about all the people who have worked really hard in response to the emergency, and about my arrival at the Dispatch Box in this new capacity. I look forward to working with him and his colleagues in the spirit that he has offered. I take this opportunity to welcome my new colleagues as part of the DEFRA team, because I look forward to working with them, too.
	We are prepared to consider giving the fire and rescue services a flood rescue duty, if and when full equipment and training are in place—but they contribute enormously already, as I saw for myself in Doncaster on Thursday evening, when I talked to firefighters from that area and to some from Herefordshire and Wales who had come with high-volume pumps to help pump the water out.
	On the question of too many agencies, I have to say that that is not my experience from the meetings and discussions that I have had every day since I took up post on Thursday. It seems to me that the agencies that need to be there are party to those discussions and, more importantly, are taking action. The system appears to have worked pretty well, and has been well co-ordinated, so I do not recognise the problem that was identified by one chief fire officer.
	The flood centre has been set up in response to the particular circumstances we are facing. I do not yet have an estimate of uninsured losses. As soon as I do, I will provide it to the hon. Gentleman and to the House. On help for those who are not insured, which is a real problem—in one of the streets in a very poor area that I visited on Thursday, it was estimated that some 50 per cent. of households did not have insurances—leaflets have been produced and distributed. Staff from the job centres have been in the rest centres offering advice. Crisis loans are available for those who have left their houses with literally nothing, and there are community care grants. There is £170 million in funding for the latter and a contingency reserve. They are available for people on jobseeker's allowance, income support and pension credit, but there is—as the hon. Gentleman will know—a capital limit.
	The money that will go to local authorities through the Bellwin scheme will depend on the costs that they incur above the threshold, so I cannot give an estimate at this point. On the EU solidarity fund, the rules are that one can apply when the costs exceed either €3 billion or more than 0.8 per cent. of gross national income. I am not aware that we have yet reached that threshold. If we do so, it is something that we would consider.
	The hon. Gentleman asks whether there will be a proper priority for planning new flood defence schemes. Well, a new priority will certainly be given, not least because of the increase in funding that I have announced today, which all hon. Members who have constituencies where flooding is a problem—that includes mine, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out—will welcome. On the building of houses on the flood plain and other places where there is a risk of flooding, planning policy statement 25 clearly states that the Environment Agency must be consulted, and it has the power to ask the Government Office to call in applications where its advice is not being taken. I will indeed undertake to look at how that is being applied.
	Finally, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that the flooding may be a consequence of the changing climate with which we all have to deal. I will look at the suggestion that has been made about reports on adaptation, because it is something that we are all going to have to learn to live with.

Elliot Morley: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend to his new appointment. He will find that it is never dull in DEFRA. Does he agree that still only very few people are on the Environment Agency flood warning system, and will he raise awareness of it? In relation to the work that is being done by the Environment Agency, people often look for someone to blame in these circumstances. Will he join me in emphasising the huge commitment of those who have worked round the clock to deal with this emergency, some of whom are invisible—such as those who operate the internal drainage board systems, which also contribute to dealing with floods?

Hilary Benn: I very much welcome both my right hon. Friend's points. First, the flood warning system is a good one, as I know from personal experience. I urge everyone to get plugged in to it, because it gives people notice and enables them to take action in such circumstances. Secondly, I agree that, faced with such difficulties, some people do get angry, and it is hard to say about what we saw last week, "This is pretty unprecedented." The current estimate is that such things happen once in every 150 years. The truth is that, with rainfall at that level, even the best defences in the world are likely to be over-topped, and rivers will overflow. We have seen the consequences of that.
	As the mood of the House reflected, it is absolutely right that we pay tribute to those who have worked incredibly hard over the past few days. If I may use the expression, they have bust a gut to help people who are distressed because of what has happened to their homes. We should applaud them for their efforts and continue to work with might and main to help those who have suffered.

Christopher Huhne: On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, may I also join in the praise of those in the emergency and other public services who have struggled with the aftermath of the flooding, and extend our sympathy to all those families who have lost loved ones and whose property has been affected by the flooding? I also extend our best wishes to the new Secretary of State on his appointment to what is an increasingly crucial job of national security as well as environmental aspects.
	Does the Secretary of State accept that the cause of the floods in Hull, Doncaster, Sheffield, Leeds, Shropshire and elsewhere was, overwhelmingly, the failure of storm drains and sewerage systems to handle the enormous rainfall? It was therefore surface water, not traditional fluvial or coastal flooding. Will he now review the requirements placed on the private water companies to provide adequate drainage in co-ordination with their regulator Ofwat? Does he recognise that the Government's last statement on the subject, "Making Space for Water", has become substantially outdated since these events? Will he also ensure a mapping of flood risks from surface water, not just fluvial and coastal flooding? Will he publish a list of towns and cities that might be at risk of flooding as a consequence of similar extreme weather events?
	The Liberal Democrats welcome the substantial increase in flood defence spending announced by the Secretary of State. Previous announcements of big increases in spending, however, have been substantially delayed, as the chief executive of the Environment Agency testified to the Public Accounts Committee recently. Will the Secretary of State therefore tell us the path of the welcome build-up to £800 million in 2010-11? In particular, what figures has he now agreed for 2008-09 and 2009-10? Does he also agree that the increase highlights how ludicrous it was of his Department to cut flood defence spending by £15 million last year?
	Will the Secretary of State confirm that his Department and the Environment Agency were asked by the Treasury, as recently as two weeks ago, to make cuts of £20 million in their budgets for next year, before the floods struck? Is the belated and grudging conversion to the need for more spending just another example of the new Prime Minister's lamentable failure to understand the significance of climate change? Does not that show a devastating lack of foresight on his part?

Hilary Benn: I thank the hon. Gentleman for the kind words at the beginning of his speech, although it went downhill thereafter. I simply do not agree with what he has just said. When I have come to the House to announce a significant further increase in expenditure on flood defence, it is pretty churlish of him to have a go at the new Prime Minister; I would hope that the House would welcome our determination. Many Members in the Chamber represent areas that have been affected by flooding, and all will welcome the increase in investment.
	I accept that the system was overwhelmed; that is true. The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the considerable impact of surface water, as well as river flooding. As I indicated previously, however, even the best defences in the world will sometimes be over-topped and overwhelmed by such concentrated rainfall. The arrangements put in place are therefore not at fault. In the end, the cause is a lot of rain, and the House needs to recognise that.
	I have already said that there are other lessons to be learned, and we will do so. I cannot, with respect to the hon. Gentleman, undertake to forecast which places might be likely to flood in the future because that depends on where it rains and what happens, but I accept that further work needs to be done to improve the quality of the information available about where particular properties are at risk.
	We will publish the path to the figure of £800 million in 2010-11 later, but I want to correct the hon. Gentleman on one point. We did not cut the capital budget for expenditure on flood defence, and it is important that I make that clear to the House.

George Mudie: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred to the uninsured and he will know that people can be uninsured either because they are too poor to obtain insurance, or, like some of my constituents and his, because they are facing their third flood in three years so that their premiums have soared and they cannot afford them.
	The Minister of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (John Healey), sent out a letter today stating:
	"The provision of additional help to the uninsured would undermine the incentive for households to take out insurance, but will be considered on an ongoing basis."
	Will my right hon. Friend undertake such consideration or reconsideration urgently, and much more sympathetically than just with regard to essential items? Will he assure us that the Department is speaking to the Association of British Insurers to persuade the insurance companies not to raise premiums to such an extent that further people are uninsured?

Hilary Benn: We will certainly give the maximum help that we can under the arrangements that I have outlined through both the crisis loans and the community care grant. There is a real issue, which I am sure my hon. Friend would acknowledge, that if the Government were generally to compensate people who were not insured, people might draw the conclusion that they did not need to insure themselves because in the end they would be bailed out. But he makes a really important point about the cost of premiums, and I undertake to talk to the ABI, both in relation to responding as quickly as possible in providing assistance to those who are insured in regard to the current emergency, but also in relation to what might be done in future to deal with the problem that he has rightly identified.

Michael Jack: On behalf of myself and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment. We look forward to our dialogue with him on flooding and other matters.
	Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, produced a foresight report that counselled us to take into account extreme weather events when looking at flooding issues. Most people would say that June's weather has been, to say the least, extreme, so will the Secretary of State think about asking Sir David King to chair an expert group as soon as possible to re-examine our preparedness for extreme weather events and, in particular, the models that exist to enable us to predict the effects in the light of the welcome increase in funding to ensure that it is applied in the most effective way?

Hilary Benn: I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who so ably chairs the Select Committee, for his kind words, and I look forward to working with him and members of his Committee on all the matters for which I now have responsibility. I am happy to go away and think about his suggestion; I said that I wanted to learn the lessons. There are a number of matters on which we will need to reflect and I will add his proposal to the list.

Ann Cryer: When my right hon. Friend talks to the ABI, will he also mention that, in 2002, 200 families in my constituency were rendered homeless by the floods at Stockbridge, and more than anything else that their situation was exacerbated by the attitude of just one major insurance company, which I will not name? However, I threatened to do so at the time, and that was the only thing that led it to exercise its brain to sort the matter out. One elderly lady was out of her house for a year because the insurance firm insisted that she accepted the lowest tender, which meant that cowboys took over and worked only part-time. It was only when I threatened the company that it took action and employed some decent workers. Will my right hon. Friend mention that?

Hilary Benn: I am concerned to hear about that case after the previous flooding in my hon. Friend's constituency. If Members have concerns about the way in which insurance companies or others are responding to the floods, and they think that I can be of assistance, I ask them to get in touch with me, as I shall be happy to raise such issues with the ABI in general, and if necessary in serious cases, with particular companies, too.

Peter Tapsell: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his ministerial appointment, although I am sorry that he is leaving the Department for International Development where he has done such a splendid job.
	As the right hon. Gentleman indicated, a great majority of the houses I have visited in my Lincolnshire constituency in recent days were uninsured against flood. It is a serious and urgent problem, which is difficult to resolve. People were uninsured not because they were feckless, but because they had repeatedly been refused insurance cover, and the few who thought they could obtain it could not afford the high premiums. In addition to crisis loans, which are welcome but will worry people who do not want to get themselves into debt repaying them, will the Secretary of State hold a meeting with the insurance industry as a whole to see whether there could be some form of Government subsidy for such uninsured flood groups? As the Prime Minister said in another context, the first duty of a Government is to protect their citizens, and that applies to flooding as well as to terrorism.

Hilary Benn: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I have moved from dealing with one group of farmers—in the developing world—to another group here in the UK, some of whom I met at the Royal show this morning.
	The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point. The Government have worked with the ABI over time to ensure that the possibility of insurance is available to most homes, but I know that does not cover all properties so I recognise the dilemma that he raises of people who cannot get insurance. As I said in answer to a previous question, I undertake to add his point to the list of issues that I shall raise with the ABI.

Denis MacShane: Exactly a week ago, my constituency of Rotherham and the wider borough were turned into a maze of lakes, rivers and streams where houses, roads and shops had stood. I pay tribute in particular to the work of Rotherham council in co-ordinating relief help and to the chamber of commerce, which has not been mentioned, but has been out and about helping to dry out business properties. I have three specific questions for my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May we perhaps just have one?

Denis MacShane: In that case, I shall write to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is very helpful.

Richard Taylor: As vice-chair of the all-party flood prevention group, I welcome the Secretary of State to his new post and I welcome, too, his thoughtful and caring approach. Obviously, I welcome the extra money for flood alleviation. In my area, the problem this time was not the big rivers but surface water, so I should like to suggest just three things for the Environment Agency to—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I point out to the hon. Gentleman and to the House generally that this is the second statement today. I am anxious to call as many people as I possibly can but I have to protect further business. Unless Members are brief and ask only one question at a time and the Secretary of State gives reasonably brief answers, an awful lot of people will not be called.

Richard Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	Will the Secretary of State encourage the Environment Agency to carry out camera studies of culverts under new builds and to look at the new type of grids that are more effective and let water through more easily, while holding back extra detritus?

Hilary Benn: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I shall willingly raise both issues with the Environment Agency.

Angela Smith: I welcome my right hon. Friend to his post. I welcome, too, the support he has offered the people of south Yorkshire. Last Friday, I visited a large number of constituents who were badly traumatised by the flood. That experience persuaded me that I shall have to continue to press my right hon. Friend to ensure that support is delivered as quickly as possible to people who need it. Will he talk to the ABI on the varied experience that is already materialising in relation to insurance claims? Will he ensure that—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady has made her point.

Hilary Benn: I can certainly assure my hon. Friend that we will continue to provide all the support that we can. I visited one of the rest centres in Doncaster with the Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband), and the care being provided was frankly outstanding and was an example of the community at its best. If she lets me know the rest of the point that she started to make, I will happily raise it with the ABI.

Henry Bellingham: The very future of many parts of my constituency depends on proper sea defences. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the promised increase in expenditure will cover sea defences as well as inshore flood defences?

Hilary Benn: I will need to write to the hon. Gentleman about that, because I am still in the process of understanding exactly how all the bits work. I hope that he will accept that reply.

Paddy Tipping: When the present crisis is over, will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State look at how resources are allocated to rural areas? Villages in Nottinghamshire, such as Lowdham, Lambley and Woodborough, have been badly flooded, but on the present cost-benefit analysis look unlikely ever to receive any protection. Should not people be safe and secure in both urban and rural areas?

Hilary Benn: People certainly should be protected, but in this emergency lots of places have been affected and, in the end, the Environment Agency, with its resources, has to decide on priorities.
	I can save the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) the cost of a stamp, because the answer to his question is yes. Both coastal defences and inland defences will be covered.

John Redwood: Will the Secretary of State tell the Environment Agency that people expect it to maintain its flood defences to a good standard, which it does not, and to improve those defences to stop flooding, rather than putting people's homes on a map of properties at risk, which makes it very dear to insure them?

Hilary Benn: I am sure that the Environment Agency would say that it does its best to make sure not only that new flood defences are provided, but that the existing ones are properly maintained. If the right hon. Gentleman has concerns about particular flood defences where he thinks that that is not the case, will he please draw them to my attention and I will raise them with the Environment Agency?

Colin Burgon: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, as a Leeds MP, will be aware that both the River Aire and the River Wharfe have given us great problems, along with surface water. In the light of recent experiences, what plans are there to improve co-ordination between the Environment Agency, Leeds city council and Yorkshire Water? Many of my constituents are really confused about who is in charge.

Hilary Benn: If my hon. Friend would like me to look at that matter as a response to the flooding that Leeds has recently experienced, I would be happy to do so. I know that the Environment Agency works hard in partnership with a wide range of agencies to ensure that there is clarity of responsibility, but I am happy to take up the point he raised.

Richard Bacon: It is only just over three months ago that we were told that, due to the acute lack of rainfall, no matter what happened later in the year, we would probably face hosepipes bans and standpipes. Presumably that is no longer the case. Can the Secretary of State tell us what plans he has to build more reservoirs so that we can find somewhere to put the rainfall when it comes so that we can use it when we have dry period?

Hilary Benn: The problem that we are dealing with and to which the hon. Gentleman draws attention is that there is not enough rain in some places and far too much in others. In the end, we are going to have to ensure that we have got the right systems in place to cope with both, and I would be happy to come back to him and tell him more about how we might do that.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: My right hon. Friend will know that I represent the constituency of Crosby, which has 15 miles of coastline, a river and thousands of properties that are either below sea level or at sea level. I am particularly concerned about my constituents who live in Hightown. The Environment Agency proposes to extend the ditch-and-dike system there and I thank him for the work that his Department has done to introduce that. However, the local council has just written to the parish council in Hightown to inform it that more than £1 million, which was provided by house builders for coastal works, will have to be returned to the Government because it has not been spent. Will he please do all he can to encourage Sefton council to put forward plans to spend that money quickly, given the level of concern and the demand for measures to address the terrible problem that my constituents face regularly?

Hilary Benn: I will be happy to examine the case that my hon. Friend raises and come back to her.

Graham Stuart: I, too, congratulate the Secretary of State on his new appointment. Hundreds of homes in Beverley and Holderness were flooded last week. Untold misery was caused to residents, despite the heroic efforts of the emergency services and the local community. Residents want to know why pumps were not installed on the Burstwick drain, why the outlets into the Humber appeared not to work fully and properly, and why it appeared that the Environment Agency had not carried out basic maintenance of the drain ways. Will the Secretary of State visit my constituency and hear from local people and drainage boards about the solutions that they feel could be put in place so that devastation of such an extent need not be repeated?

Hilary Benn: I cannot guarantee that I will be able to come to the hon. Gentleman's constituency, but if he would like to give me further details about the issues that he raises, I would be happy to meet him so that I can put the points to the Environment Agency and he can provide an answer for his constituents.

Mary Creagh: I congratulate my right hon. Friend and his team on their new appointments.
	I am sure that my right hon. Friend will want to join me in paying tribute to the staff at St. Catherine's church in Agbrigg, where 10 streets have been flooded and, sadly, four arrests were made for looting this weekend, and to council staff at the Lightwaves leisure centre. Both places opened crisis centres to deal with people who were temporarily homeless. In the past few days, insurance companies, Yorkshire Water, Yorkshire Forward, the council and the Environment Agency have given me information about what to do in the event of flooding. However, when I went to the East Flanshaw estate on Friday to visit people who had been flooded, they did not seem to have received any of that information directly from the agencies themselves. Is it not time for us to look at how councils can work together, bring information together and send it out, perhaps with council tax bills, to people who are at risk of flooding?

Hilary Benn: I agree completely with my hon. Friend. The most striking aspect of the visit that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and I made on Thursday night was the issue of communication. People want to know how they might prepare in advance, and, when such circumstances arise, they want to know what is going on, what efforts are being made and where they can go for assistance. I assure my hon. Friend that we will examine that as part of the lessons-learned exercise. There must be clarity about who is responsible for providing such information to local communities. Local authorities should take the lead.

Bob Spink: The Secretary of State is both a caring and thoughtful Minister. In 1953, 58 people on Canvey Island lost their lives in the floods, so this is a matter of great concern to my constituents. Can he give them a commitment to, and details of, changes to Government policy to give the fire service a statutory role in flood rescue that would make them, and their fire stations, safer?

Hilary Benn: Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, fire services and all other statutory agencies have a responsibility to participate in activities when such emergencies arise. We are prepared to examine the specific question of the flood rescue duty—I mentioned that in reply to an earlier question—when the fire service has the necessary equipment in place. I hope that that will satisfy the hon. Gentleman. If he requires anything further, will he please let me know?

Philip Dunne: May I commend to the Secretary of State the work that Shropshire's local authority's emergency services have done in Shropshire over the past 10 days or so? If he has not already done so, may I suggest that he reads with his usual diligence the National Audit Office report on flood risk management, which was reviewed last week by the Public Accounts Committee? He will see from the report that last year's funding for flood defence in inland waters was down by £70 million on the previous year. He will also establish that the Bellwin formula does not of course apply to the Environment Agency. Will he discuss with the chief executive of the Environment Agency how much of the additional funding that he has committed today will be available to the agency? The chief executive told the Public Accounts Committee last week that
	"we will be talking to Defra about our budget. However, in their current parlous state I find it difficult to believe that we will get much from them, so it may well be we have to seek Treasury funding."
	How much of the £800 million will go to the Environment Agency and how much will go to Bellwin?

Hilary Benn: May I echo the hon. Gentleman's praise of everybody in Shropshire for their response to the flooding? I will read the National Audit Office report; I have not had time to do so, because I have been dealing with the practical problems on the ground. The funding that I announced is available to the Environment Agency, but it also supports the local authorities concerned, and later I will announce exactly what the rise will be that will ensure the £800 million figure. I informed the chief executive of the Environment Agency of the figure this afternoon when I was briefing in preparation for my statement to the House, and I think that it will be widely welcomed.

STATISTICS AND REGISTRATION SERVICE BILL (PROGRAMME) (NO. 3)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No.83A(7) (Programme motions) ,
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Statistics and Registration Service Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 8th January and 13th March 2007 (Statistics and Registration Service Bill (Programme)) and Statistics and Registration Service Bill (Programme) (No.2)):
	 Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement at this day's sitting.
	 Subsequent stages
	2. Any further Message for the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	3. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement. —[Mr. Watts.]
	 Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day

Statistics and Registration Service Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 3
	 — 
	Members

Lords amendment: No. 1, in page 2, line 3, leave out "Treasury" and insert "Cabinet Office".

Angela Eagle: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 9, 21 to 30, 40 to 64, 66 and the Government motions to disagree thereto, and Government amendments (a) to (qqq) in lieu thereof.

Angela Eagle: The amendments all deal with where residual responsibility for the statistics board should lie. As was said on Report in this House, the Government believe that if the provisions to ensure the independence of the board are effective, the question of who has residual responsibility will become much less significant. As a result, the Government still believe that the board would benefit from having the Treasury as a link with the Government. The Treasury has a strong interest in ensuring that there is a good evidence base, has long experience of working with and understanding statistics, and has a role in co-ordinating performance reporting and monitoring across Government.
	We hoped that retaining the link with the Treasury might build further value into the reforms. There has been considerable debate on the issue in both Houses. The Government recognise the strength of feeling on the issue, particularly in the other place. We are therefore prepared to agree to the shift of responsibility in principle. However, for largely technical reasons, we cannot accept the amendments in their current form, so we have tabled some in lieu, which I hope will be accepted in both Houses. The amendments that we tabled are not all strictly consequential on the Lords amendments, so we have tabled a motion to disagree with the Lords amendments. However, I hope that it is clear that we accept the premise of the Lords amendments.
	The key difference between the Government amendments offered in lieu and the Lords amendments is that our amendments would confer the responsibility for the board on the Minister for the Cabinet Office throughout the Bill, instead of on the Cabinet Office itself, which is a building, or on the Prime Minister. It is not usual to confer functions on a Department in legislation; the convention is to confer functions on Ministers, rather than Departments. The practice for the Treasury is no different in that respect, because when an Act of Parliament confers functions on the Treasury, it confers them not on the departmental Treasury but on the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury by virtue of the definition in schedule 1 to the Interpretation Act 1978. There is no similar definition of the Cabinet Office, so the functions that are to be discharged in the Cabinet Office must be conferred on the Minister for the Cabinet Office. Accordingly, the Government amendments follow convention in conferring the residual responsibilities for the board on the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
	For the sake of administrative efficiency, we are also providing that the Chancellor's current ministerial responsibilities under the Census Act 1920 and section 19 of the Registration Service Act 1953 will transfer from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office. That ensures that the board will have to report to just one Minister in respect of its census and related statistical functions, and avoids any possibility of confusion or overlapping ministerial responsibilities. I commend the motion, and the Government amendments, to the House.

David Gauke: First, may I congratulate the Exchequer Secretary on her re-appointment to the Front Bench? I had the honour and privilege of serving with the hon. Lady for a number of months on the Treasury Committee and I know that she is a forthright and formidable defender of the Government. Her promotion is well earned and well deserved.
	May I also congratulate, not just because he is here, the new Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), who until Friday guided the Bill from its earlier stages with much skill, expertise and courtesy, which those of us who are interested in Treasury matters have come to expect? I wish him well in his new role.
	If the Exchequer Secretary will forgive me, I had hoped last week that the hon. Gentleman would continue as Financial Secretary. On the previous two occasions when we debated the Bill, he agreed to amendments, albeit retabled ones, that I proposed. No sooner had I started preparing for this afternoon's debate than I learned that he had again agreed, more or less, to the amendments that I would argue for—the new politics, as the hon. Gentleman suggests from a sedentary position. I do know whether that trend was likely to continue. If it was, that might explain why he has moved. Perhaps we can hope that the Exchequer Secretary will continue in similar vein.
	As the hon. Lady pointed out, the amendments relate to the residual authority that exists within the statistics arrangements created by the Bill relating to matters such as the appointment of the statistics board, directions, the power to authorise disclosure of information, use of information, and orders and regulations relating to the Bill. The Opposition welcome the move and will not oppose the Government's amendments.
	At every stage the Government's position has been that the Treasury is the right place for those residual powers to rest, and at every stage Opposition Members from all parties have argued that that was inappropriate and that it would be right for the Treasury to surrender the powers. Finally, last week—the amendments were tabled on Thursday—the Treasury surrendered the residual rights to the Cabinet Office.
	Hon. Members may speculate about what has changed in the past week and why a Department that has jealously guarded its own powers from other Departments and expanded its own powers into other Departments has changed course. What events in the past seven days could have meant that powers that previously were ultimately in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer are now in the hands, ultimately, of the Prime Minister? We can speculate whether this is part of a general weakening of the powers of the Treasury, or whether the Prime Minister recognised that the enormous powers that have accrued to the Treasury over the past 10 years are not only unhealthy for other Departments, but perhaps not in the best interests of any Prime Minister.
	Perhaps the answer lies in the arguments that were made during the progress of the Bill by many hon. Members. I look back at previous debates and see the contributions in Committee from my hon. Friends the Members for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers), for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) and for Braintree (Mr. Newmark), myself, the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) and, in particular, the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), all of whom argued that residual power should rest with the Cabinet Office.
	Most persuasive of all were the speeches by a number of Members of the other place, especially Lord Moser, who speaks with great authority as a former director of the Central Statistical Office, and Lord Turnbull, a former Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet and Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, who is an astute observer of the way in which the Government work. Essentially, the same argument has been made by all parties: the Treasury, as a major consumer of statistics, has a conflict of interest in performing the role. There is concern about not only an actual conflict of interest, but the perception of a conflict of interest. In the debate in the House of Lords, Lord Moser said:
	"People will find it harder to accept that we have really gone down the road of independence if a major consumer has responsibility for statistics."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 24 April 2007; Vol. 691, c. 594.]
	He also pointed out that the Cabinet Office provides a good base for co-ordinating Departments—a judgment that he based on his experience.
	The argument that we have heard throughout—indeed, we heard it again today from the Exchequer Secretary—is that the Treasury has a crucial role in co-ordinating the reporting of Government performance and monitoring across Government, as well as being involved in statistics. The hon. Member for Wentworth referred to that point in the Public Bill Committee, where he highlighted the role of the Treasury
	"given the significance of statistics in reporting on departmental performance and understanding the levers for successful reform and the development of public services in which the Treasury has inevitably and increasingly taken an important co-ordinating role." ——[Official Report, Statistics and Registration Service Public Bill Committee, 16 January 2007; c. 56.]
	I do not know whether the Treasury will take less of a co-ordinating role in future, but none the less that argument does not outweigh the argument about conflicts of interest.
	The Exchequer Secretary has referred to the strength of feeling in the House of Lords. Whether or not she accepts the argument that the Treasury has a conflict of interest in performing those residual functions, is there any suggestion that as the Treasury has surrendered those residual powers it will play less of a role in co-ordinating other Departments?
	Finally, the key residual power in the Bill relates to the appointment of members of the board. We have heard a great deal in recent days about an increased role for Parliament in major public appointments. The hon. Member for Wentworth will remember that I asked him in the Public Bill Committee whether at this late stage there might still be a greater place for Parliament in the appointment process for members of the statistics board. I am grateful to the Exchequer Secretary for explaining that the Government and the Treasury accept the purpose behind the Lords amendment. Their lordships' strength of feeling is clear—this is not the only example where their strength of feeling is clear, and I hope that further concessions will be made—but Conservative Members welcome the Government amendments.

Vincent Cable: I extend my congratulations to the Exchequer Secretary. A few weeks ago, I found myself debating with her on television and radio, and perhaps I should have taken that as an early warning of what was to come, but she is welcome in her new role. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey) on guiding the Bill through Committee and on debating it in a way that we all appreciated. Through his intercession, another key difficulty has been removed, and we have only one remaining difficulty with the Government about the Bill as a whole.
	In the same spirit of bonhomie, may I make a correction? The last time I spoke in the House, I mistook the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) for Guy Hands, the equity fund entrepreneur. Although the hon. Gentleman was not offended—I think he was amused—he has asked me to read that correction into the record, not least because if he were thought to be a trillionaire, his party fundraisers would be after him.
	There is little to say about the Bill. The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) acknowledged that the Government accept the profession's criticism that the role of the superintending Department should properly go to the Cabinet Office. From the outset, the key point has always been—it was made in the Select Committee report—that the Treasury potentially had a conflict of interest in relation to economic statistics and, at the same time, no particular interest or expertise in the hundreds if not thousands of other national statistics produced by Government, and that it was altogether more appropriate to have a Department that on the one hand was less powerful, and on the other hand had a broader remit. The Cabinet Office meets that description. It is a co-ordinating Department, and were there a serious challenge to the authority of the statistics board, the Cabinet Office Minister could invoke the authority of the Prime Minister. This is a good decision. I appreciate the fact that the Government have listened on this key point and I am sure that we can proceed quickly as a result.

Michael Fallon: On behalf of my constituent, Guy Hands, I thank the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) for putting the record straight. I am not sure that Guy Hands thought that he was in any serious danger of being confused with my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands), but, if he was, at least the position is now clear.
	I congratulate the Exchequer Secretary and the former Financial Secretary on their appointments. Like every other Member who has spoken, I welcome the Government's change of heart on the issue. I do not think that it was ever a huge issue or that there was any great difference; the Treasury Sub-Committee wrestled with this and in the end came down on the side of the Treasury.
	The change that has been made, though, will assist public perception in two ways. First, the Cabinet Office is clearly closer to the heart of Government and to the Prime Minister. It is where the Office for National Statistics was and where the new statistics board should be—right at the centre of Government. Secondly, the overriding argument for me, although it was a close decision, is that it is not the Treasury. Changing the ONS from being an office appointed and funded by the Treasury to a statistics board that was also appointed and funded by the Treasury would not have been a change at all. By moving it to the Cabinet Office, the Government are, late in the day, demonstrating that it really will be a newly independent body, so it is a very welcome change.
	Like other hon. Members, I am grateful for the support that we have had from their lordships, particularly from Lords Turnbull and Moser—Turnbull and Moser sound rather like outfitters to the Government—in putting the Government straight on this aspect of the Bill. Above all, we should be grateful to the former Financial Secretary. He said at one point in Committee that he did not have a completely closed mind and that he would think about the issue again. If the change is due to his having done so, I hope that he will continue in future weeks to sit on the Treasury Bench when Treasury matters are discussed.

Stewart Hosie: I, too, welcome the Exchequer Secretary to her new role. She may be aware—I am sure that she has been well briefed by the former Financial Secretary—of the debates that we have had previously.
	The Government amendments touch on a number of issues, not least the appointment of members to the board. We had deep concerns about the fact that the member from Scotland was to be appointed by the Treasury, that the power of direction in clause 27 was to be given only with the consent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that the powers to disclose to, and from, the board in Scotland also required Treasury consent under clauses 45 and 49. The Government amendments are better than the Lords amendments in one sense. In the other place, there were no amendments on clause 45 as regards disclosure to the board in Scotland; there were amendments only in relation to clause 49 on disclosure by the board in Scotland. At least these proposals are wholly consistent.
	Our objection in the first instance was that no power of consent or veto should be given to the Treasury or the Chancellor of the Exchequer in these matters. That was based on the idea that the Treasury, as a key user of economic statistics, was the wrong body to hold those powers in the first place. Although giving the responsibility to a Minister from the Cabinet Office does not remove all our concerns from previous stages, it makes the Bill much cleaner. Most important, it sends a clear message to the general public and other interest groups and organisations that use statistics that they are wholly impartial and no longer in the hands—by veto or powers of consent—of the Treasury, which is the major user, especially of economic statistics. I therefore welcome the Government's amendments.

Angela Eagle: First, I thank all those hon. Members who generously welcomed me to the Front Bench. It is always nice to be appointed to the Front Bench, and a little thrill runs down the spine when realising that one is first up on Monday afternoon. It gave me an interesting weekend of reading all the debates that hon. Members held in Committee and in the other place on the important provisions that we are discussing.
	The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) said that he would not oppose the Government amendments and that he welcomed the agreement in principle, which, again, is generous. He asked about the implications of the transfer. I agree with the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon), who said that we are considering a reasonably finely balanced issue, which the Treasury Sub-Committee examined and about which it came down originally on the side of the Treasury. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) referred to the moment in the late 1980s when the Conservative Government switched the then Central Statistical Office to the Treasury in the first place. The House has therefore considered many such issues in the past. The hon. Lady also said that determining which Department—the Treasury or the Cabinet Office—should be responsible was a fine judgment. Clearly, the Government share that view.
	In reply to the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire, I do not believe that accepting the amendments means conceding the existence of a powerful conflict of interest in the residual ministerial responsibilities for the statistics board resting with the Treasury rather than the Cabinet Office. The most important aspect is that the Bill, the main objectives of which have been widely welcomed, creates an independent statistics board, which can then distance statistics from any perception of interference for political reasons.
	I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not believe that, because the Government have made the concession, they are somehow admitting that Treasury officials are venal and want conflicts of interest, or that the Treasury cannot be entrusted with statistics. That cannot be said of any Department or any Ministers, from whatever party they happen to be. My experience of ministerial office is that statistics are the last thing that we think about because we are too buried in other matters to interfere directly in the way in which a series of statistics are chosen, or when they are compiled and released. Clearly, under the new arrangements, regardless of where residual ministerial responsibilities lie, the new statistics board will perform those duties.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked whether the Treasury would have less of a role in co-ordinating Departments. Removing residual ministerial responsibilities for statistics, which is quite narrow, will not have a bearing on the relative powers of a finance Ministry in any Government. I suspect that that will stay the same and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary will be doing his best to ensure, particularly as the spending review proceeds, that that remains the case.
	On the third issue, the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire asked about board appointments and whether there might be a role for Parliament. Clearly, Parliament will not have an added role and not in respect of the initial board appointments. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the national statistician is a Crown appointment and board appointments will be made by appropriate Ministers—ahead, I believe, of the setting up and going live of the new board in April 2008. A proper appointments process has to be in place for that. It may then be for Parliament to decide—after the non-ministerial department has been established and is up and running—how it wishes to ensure adequate scrutiny of the new department's activities. I know from looking at  Hansard that there were some interesting debates in both Houses and in Committee about how Parliament might most usefully discharge that duty. That, of course, is a matter for this House rather than for the Government to decide.
	The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) was generous in his welcome, for which I thank him. He was supportive in principle, as were the spokesmen for the other two parties. With that, I hope that the House will accept the amendments.
	 Lords amendment disagreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 9 disagreed to.

Clause 8
	 — 
	Monitoring and reporting of official statistics

Lords amendment: No. 10.

Angela Eagle: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take Lords amendments Nos. 12 to 14 and the Government motions to disagree thereto; Lords amendment No. 15 and the Government motion to disagree thereto and amendments (a) and (b) to the words so restored to the Bill; and Lords amendments Nos. 20, 67 to 70 and 72 and the Government motions to disagree thereto.

Angela Eagle: I suspect that, with this grouping of amendments, we have come to the nub of the remaining points at issue. The amendments all relate to the important issue of who under the new system should determine the rules relating to how and when statistics are released and early access to official statistics in their final form prior to publication—the so-called pre-release access points.
	There was much discussion of those matters when the Bill was last before the House. I also know from reading the proceedings that a full and robust debate took place in the other place. It is worth noting that, in both Houses and across all parties, there has been an acceptance of the principal case for pre-release access to continue under the new system. Both Houses have recognised that the principal case for pre-release is widely accepted internationally, although I accept that international practice actually varies considerably. All have accepted that Ministers need to account for the implications of policy areas for which they are democratically responsible at the time of release. That is simply the way and it has become expected that Ministers deal with such issues.
	We have achieved consensus on the view that Ministers need to be fully informed in order to make accurate judgments as to the need for and form of any mitigating action that might be required in the light of statistical release—for example, to prevent or manage market disturbances and disruption.
	That however is as far as our common understanding on the issues appears to go. The Opposition accept that pre-release access must continue, but believe that the board should determine the rules and the circumstances in which it is provided. I do not agree with their reasoning on that. We all accept that Ministers require pre-release access and we all understand why they require it. Surely Ministers themselves are the best placed to judge how much pre-release access they require, and under what conditions they require it in order to be fully informed and in a position to act if required in response to a statistical release.

Theresa Villiers: If the Government are prepared to entrust many other important decisions about statistics and our statistical system to the board, why will they not trust the board to get the answer right on pre-release rules as well?

Angela Eagle: We shall talk about these matters in detail as we consider the difference between the Lords amendments and the Government's wish to overturn them in order to maintain a situation in which pre-release access may be decided by Ministers rather than the board. The fail-safes in the Bill will lead us to a pre-release system that is transparent, consistent and widely understood by those who are interested in using statistics in the political world, the economic world and the world of policy and lobbying. Before the Lords amendments, the Bill provided an extremely robust and clear version for pre-release, which I believe that we should maintain.
	The Government's proposals will ensure that Ministers determine by way of order the rules and principles relating to pre-release under the new system. That will not give Ministers a free hand in the matter. In fact, it will put in place for the first time a system aimed at allowing a greater role for Parliament in scrutinising the content of and compliance with the new pre-release arrangements set out in the Bill. Those arrangements will be distinguished from those issues contained in the board's code of practice, which will be backed by statute.
	Unlike the content of the broader code of practice, the new pre-release arrangements that we are suggesting will require the consent of Parliament, or the legislatures in the devolved Administrations, before the secondary legislation comes into force. My predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (John Healey), suggested on Second Reading that we should have an affirmative resolution statutory instrument to put this system into place in secondary legislation.

Theresa Villiers: The Exchequer Secretary is generous in giving way again. Would it not be easier to resolve the differences between this House and the other place if the Government were prepared to publish the draft secondary legislation on pre-release? I have been asking for that since Second Reading, but it still has not appeared. Why not?

Angela Eagle: I will deal with this point a little later. I have seen the correspondence that passed between my predecessor and members of the Standing Committee which set out in general the approach that he expected the statutory instrument to take. There is not a draft of it available at the moment, but he has tried to be open about how the system will work. I shall come back to this point shortly, because I want to deal with it logically, but I hope that the hon. Lady will be pleased by what she hears when I get to that point.
	Putting new, tighter pre-release arrangements in secondary legislation, rather than in the non-statutory code, would result in a more enforceable, transparent system than the one that operates at present. The board will have a statutory duty to assess compliance with the pre-release arrangements and will be able to remove National Statistics accreditation from any product that it considers not to be in compliance with those arrangements. This amounts to a powerful and public naming and shaming mechanism that has not existed in the past. It will bring more transparency and enforceability to the pre-release arrangements than ever before.
	It is not only the board that will be in a position to judge whether the arrangements are being complied with. The arrangements will ensure an important role for Parliament in scrutinising and holding to account all participants in the statistical system. This includes determining whether and how the new pre-release arrangements have been complied with, and how effectively the board has exercised its assessment function. Parliament will also have an important role to play in determining whether the new pre-release rules contained in the secondary legislation will damage, or have damaged, the credibility of the broader statistical system. For that reason, I am announcing today that the Government will consult publicly on the draft secondary legislation before putting it to the House. I hope that that answers the hon. Lady's question, and that we will be able to have a positive consultation process ahead of the statutory instrument being laid.
	Following the undertaking by my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth on Second Reading that we would review the operation of the new pre-release arrangements after 12 months, including assessing whether they were hindering our broader objective of building trust in the statistical system, I believe that this is a welcome arrangement that should reassure those who doubt whether the Government are absolutely committed to ensuring the objectivity and independence of statistics. This reflects the fact that we recognise that the terms of pre-release access have been criticised in the past. Indeed, Opposition Members here and in the other place have been quick to remind us of that in our debates.

Theresa Villiers: It seems that the Minister herself has been critical of the rules on pre-release arrangements, as she signed up to the report of the Sub-Committee of the Treasury Select Committee that called for a very significant restriction on pre-release rules. In the case of certain data, Ministers would be given only three hours' notice under such restrictions. Does she stand by that report?

Angela Eagle: The hon. Lady has done her homework, but not quite well enough. If she had spoken to the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon), he would have told her that I rarely managed to make the Sub-Committee meetings, which was a great cause of regret to me. This was because, unfortunately, they clashed with the Labour party's parliamentary committee meetings and, as vice-chair of the party, I had to go and see the Prime Minister every week. I could therefore not attend the meetings of the hon. Gentleman's esteemed Sub-Committee. Because I never went up to hear the evidence on this area of work, I was more than happy to sign up to the report, but unhappy to table amendments when I had not heard any of the evidence. Yes, it is technically true that I signed up to the report, but I did so simply because I did not want to be disruptive to the work of the Select Committee and the Sub-Committee, which I hold in high esteem. I hope that the hon. Lady will understand that, owing to other commitments, I was never able to—

Brooks Newmark: Will the Minister give way?

Angela Eagle: Let me finish my explanation—

Brooks Newmark: It is very long winded.

Angela Eagle: Well, I think that it is important to stress that, when one is on the Treasury Committee, if one cannot get to the Sub-Committee meetings, it is disruptive simply not to agree with things, even if one might have disagreements, when one has not heard the evidence— [ Interruption. ] I am explaining to the hon. Lady that, while I was happy to sign up to the Sub-Committee's report as a member of the main Committee, I reserved my position on my view of these things.

Brooks Newmark: On a point of clarification, will the hon. Lady at least admit to the Chamber that she was present at the final meeting, in which we reviewed the report in detail, and that, having reviewed the report in detail, she signed her name to the report?

Angela Eagle: That is absolutely true, but I believe in evidence-based policy making, and as I had, unfortunately, been unable to listen to any of the evidence, I did not feel, even as a full member of the Select Committee, that I wanted to disrupt the important work of the Sub-Committee that had been looking into this matter in great detail. If I am being condemned for being a constructive member of the Treasury Committee, rather than a disruptive member, I fear that I must plead guilty.

Theresa Villiers: I do not think that there is any attempt to condemn the Minister for trying to be constructive, but we are rather concerned about the fact that she signed up to a document without having read the evidence. That does not instil a great deal of confidence that she is going to run the economy of this country very well.

Angela Eagle: It was not in my job description this morning when I arrived at the Department that I was going to be running the economy of the country, but perhaps that was over the page, in the other bit of my list of responsibilities. I am more than happy to say that I did sign up to the report, simply because reports are better when they are unanimous. The Treasury Committees, like all Select Committees of the House, are more effective if they do not work on party political lines. Given that colleagues on the Treasury Committee from both sides of the House had done a lot of the work, I was more than happy to sign up to the report, rather than do a blocking job and table a load of amendments when I had not personally been there and been able to challenge and question the witnesses. That would have been churlish, wrecking behaviour, and I was not prepared to do that, but if the hon. Lady wishes to point out such inconsistencies, she is entitled to do so—and, indeed, she has done so.

Stewart Hosie: The hon. Lady said a few moments ago that she believed in evidence-based policy making, and that is very sensible. I also believe in evidence-based law making, so why can we not have the draft secondary legislation if we are all to share in this new evidence-based approach to policy and law making?

Angela Eagle: If the hon. Gentleman had been listening earlier, he would have heard me announce that we will publish the draft statutory instrument for consultation with the House before laying it before Parliament. That is not a usual procedure, but it certainly concedes his point on this issue. We are trying to reach a workable and reasonable consensus on what has been a point at issue; indeed, this has probably been the only point that has caused any trouble between the two sides of the House as the Bill, which has been widely welcomed, completed the political process in this House and the other place.
	Past problems in the area of pre-release turn on the mistaken perception that the provision of pre-release access provides an opportunity for Ministers to interfere with and manipulate statistics before their release. That is not in fact the case, but we clearly need to do more to convince the world of that lack of interference if we are to build trust in statistics. That is why the Government have announced that, under the new system, the pre-release arrangements will be tighter, more enforceable and more transparent than they have ever been.
	The length of pre-release access for Ministers and officials will be aligned, as right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House know, at 40.5 hours for both market and non-market-sensitive statistics. That will be provided for in secondary legislation, which will also contain rules and principles to guide Departments in restricting the number of people who receive pre-release access and the number of statistical series for which it is granted. Importantly, that is all that will be reserved for Ministers to determine—pre-release, and only as defined narrowly in the Bill.

Theresa Villiers: I again thank the Exchequer Secretary for giving way; she has been very generous on this point. From what she is saying, it seems that the Government are not contemplating any significant restriction on the length of pre-release access. Will she explain, then, why Ministers in this country need so much longer to react to statistics than Ministers in more or less every country in the developed world?

Angela Eagle: I suspect that these issues have grown to be the way they are because of custom and practice. If the hon. Lady looks at the changes made by my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth, in aligning market and non-market statistics and bringing the time for pre-release for all statistics down from as much as five days to 40.5 hours, she will see that we have made significant progress. I understand that some people wish there to be no pre-release whatever, while others wish it to be only an hour or a couple of hours. That is an issue of the length of time, and the Government have decided that 40.5 hours is an appropriate length of time in this instance. That is a significant improvement on the current situation, and I hope that the hon. Lady will welcome that.
	All other aspects of release practices, including those identified in some of the amendments before us, will be for the board alone to determine, rather than for Ministers. For example, it will be for the board to lay down rules and principles relating to the timing and regularity of statistical releases, the way in which statistics must be released and the persons responsible for issuing that release. The importance of that should not be underestimated. Clearly, the perception of ministerial interference in statistics flows partly from the mistaken belief that Ministers intervene in the timing of releases. Under the new system, the board will be responsible for determining rules in relation to release, timing and practices; those will not be determined by Ministers.
	Under the new system, the board will have a statutory duty to assess whether those rules have been complied with. We expect the board, in undertaking that assessment, to examine the conduct and practices of every single person involved in the production and release of any given statistic, and that includes Ministers, press officers, briefing officials and everyone in between. If, in that assessment process, it is found that a Minister or an official had tried to move a scheduled release time, for example, for a political reason, the board would have a duty under the Bill to remove that product's National Statistics accreditation and to report its findings publicly. If that transpired, I expect that the House would also be moved to scrutinise the actions of the Minister or the Department in question. That is transparency, and it would make it almost unimaginable that a Minister would interfere for political reasons, given the consequences that would be likely to follow such interference.
	Despite all that added transparency and the enforceability points that go to the board, and despite the fact the board alone is responsible for determining rules relating to the important issue of release practices, the Government will go further. That is why we have announced that we are committed to the creation of a central publication hub, through which all national statistics will be released under the new system, separating statistical releases from policy commentary. The hub will be an integral part of the overall package of release practice reform, and as with other release practices, the board will be responsible for the development and oversight of the hub and how it works.
	To summarise, the Government remain firmly persuaded that our package of reforms in this crucial area is the right way forward. We have provided for pre-release, and only pre-release, to be reserved for Ministers to determine. That reflects the fact that only they can judge the amount of access and the conditions under which it is granted, such that people are fully informed and in a position to act if required following a statistical release. We will reduce the amount of access from up to five days, as now, to 40.5 hours for all statistics. We will provide in secondary legislation for rules to guide Departments in restricting the number of people who receive access and the number of statistics series to which there is access. We will call on the independent board to establish a central publication hub. Those reforms will result in a tighter, more transparent and more enforceable system. I cannot accept the amendments made in the other place, and I urge the House to disagree with the noble Lords on this matter.

Theresa Villiers: I start by congratulating the Exchequer Secretary on her appointment and by welcoming her to the Front Bench again. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke), the shadow Economic Secretary, I pay tribute to the work done by her predecessor, the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), in minding the Bill. Although in some respects he and I disagreed fundamentally about it, he worked hard on it and tried to improve it as it went through its parliamentary process.
	The Opposition are pleased to support the Lords amendments in this group on release and pre-release. I would like to look first at Lords amendment No. 14, which relates to the board's power to set the rules determining the release of Government statistics. Although it is often overlooked in the heated debate on pre-release, ensuring that the principles of objectivity and integrity govern the release of statistics is probably as important as pre-release, if not more so.
	Lords amendment No. 14 specifies that the code should cover the location from which the release is made, the time at which it should be made, and the persons responsible for it. It addresses what Professor Tim Holt of the Royal Statistical Society described as
	"an impossible tension at the heart of the release process",
	whereby the responsibility for explaining the figures and defending departmental performance is vested in the same people.
	The spin placed on the data when they are first announced can be critical to the news coverage that they receive. Political influence on the process of release is a significant factor in undermining public trust in official figures. The Opposition therefore believe that it is important that the rules governing release of statistics should provide for a separation of the two functions of announcing statistical work and commenting on it and justifying ministerial performance. The physical separation envisaged by the central hub—announced on Second Reading by the then Financial Secretary, the hon. Member for Wentworth—is welcome. However, we have yet to hear much detail on how that hub will operate in practice and whether the board will have the final say over how it operates. We support amendment No. 14 as it would provide a welcome guarantee that the board could specify the people responsible for the release of data and ensure that they are distinct from the departmental officials providing comment on them.
	I shall now turn to my second and more high profile point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) said in Committee, the Government's proposal to exclude pre-release rules from the code of practice and the remit of the new statistics board leaves a black hole in the middle of the proposed legislation. The Opposition believe that, if this reform is to succeed in rebuilding trust in official figures, the rules on pre-release access to statistics should be in the hands of the statistics board and the new independent framework established by the proposed legislation, and not left in the hands of Ministers.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) has a distinguished record on statistical matters going back a number of years. He stated in Committee that the Government approach in the Bill
	"is like giving batsmen the ability to decide whether the leg before wicket rule should apply to them. It is wrong in principle and wrong in practice." ——[Official Report, Statistics and Registration Service Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2007; c. 170.]
	Lord Turnbull said in the other place:
	"I am not happy with the rather brusque wording of the Bill in Clause 11, which in effect tells the board to keep its nose out of setting release times and leaving Ministers to help themselves to as much time as they want."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 26 March 2007; Vol. 690, c. 1484.]
	According to the Government, the thrust of the reform is to put trust in the board to take important decisions on how our statistical system should operate. It is therefore striking that the Government have singled out this element of the rules on statistics as one where Ministers will retain their grip and the political advantages that that gives them.
	The onus is on the Government to show why a special exception needs to be made in the case of pre-release rules when the Bill allows so many other important decisions to be made by the board or the national statistician and not by Ministers. I ask the Exchequer Secretary a simple question: if we can trust the board to take so many important decisions—including on key aspects of how the retail prices index will operate—why cannot we trust it on pre-release as well?
	The truth is that certain major Departments are determined to keep control over early access to their sensitive social statistics. They are aware of the value of the in-built advantage they receive from widespread early access to departmental data, sometimes days in advance of publication. That enables them to shape and influence the presentation of figures and engage in a softening-up process. The longer the period allowed for pre-release, the greater the opportunity for political mischief through spinning and interpreting the data. That gives Ministers an invaluable tool in the process that Professor Roger Jowell of City university described as "discounting bad news" in advance of publication to divert attention from what might be an inconvenient truth. As the hon. Member for Hove (Ms Barlow) memorably let slip in Committee, it enables Ministers to give official statistics the "treatment" that they deem appropriate. That "treatment" generally has more to do with spin than with any urgent policy measures needed to respond to the figures in question. Lax pre-release rules maximise the opportunities for Ministers to spin the figures and push the headline that they want to see in the next day's papers. Even civil servants without party political motivation are not immune in this respect; they might wish to emphasise certain elements in statistics in order to place their Department in the best, or least unfavourable, light.
	The Statistics Commission, the Royal Statistical Society, the statistics users forum, the Treasury Committee, almost every respondent to the consultation and almost all the Back Benchers who spoke in the House of Lords on this issue want pre-release rules to be reformed and restricted and the board to be put in the driving seat on what the rules should be. Charles Bean from the Bank of England also noted the advantages of restricting ministerial pre-release in terms of the public's perception of the integrity of the statistical processes. The Labour-dominated Treasury Committee—it includes six former Ministers and the Exchequer Secretary herself—concluded that an advance notice period of three hours was generally sufficient. Even the then Financial Secretary acknowledged when he gave evidence to the Treasury Committee that current pre-release arrangements
	"contribute to the perception of interference in statistics."
	During the debates in the other place, Lord Moser—because of his unparalleled expertise, his opinion has rightly been prayed in aid repeatedly during the debate on the Bill—said of pre-release:
	"I know from my years in charge of official statistics that hardly anything is more important than getting these rules right and making them acceptable."
	He said that he viewed pre-release rules as
	"central to trust and confidence"
	and stated:
	"The way in which the Bill is drafted to deal with this issue is astonishing."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 May 2007; Vol. 691, c. 1074-75.]
	He also pointed out, as I did in Committee, that the rules on pre-release have been relaxed and broadened over recent years. That point has been strongly made by Professor Tim Holt, who is a former head of the Government Statistical Service. Like many others, Professor Holt and Lord Moser pointed out that in the UK we give access to data to more people for a longer period and in respect of more data than in almost every other developed country.

Angela Eagle: Does the hon. Lady accept that some of the changes introduced in the Bill—particularly those giving the board extra powers and directing Departments to establish a more coherent process—will lead to fewer officials having access, standardise privilege procedures across Government and lead to a generally improved situation? Even if she does not think that we are going about things in the best possible way, will she not concede that the Government's plans will lead to a great improvement?

Theresa Villiers: Unfortunately, only the Exchequer Secretary can answer her question, because the number of people who are given access to statistics will be determined by Ministers after the secondary legislation is presented to Parliament. I cannot answer her question. I hope that fewer people will gain access to statistics days in advance of publication, but I am unable to answer whether that will be the case. Her intervention highlights the very point that I am seeking to make.
	The fact that there is an unfavourable international comparison has been mentioned, and it was echoed by Lord Moser's fellow Cross Bencher, Lord Turnbull. I hope that the House will pay particular heed to Lord Turnbull's views on this issue, as he clearly has no political axe to grind and his long experience in government gives him great insight into the workings of Government and what Ministers reasonably need in pre-release access. He expressed dismay about how far away we are from international best practice and pronounced the existing arrangements to be unacceptable. The Opposition have accepted the case for the retention of pre-release access, but we are convinced of the need to tighten the rules. Statistics should be allowed to speak for themselves, with the rules strengthened to minimise ministerial interference and pre-emptive spin.
	The then Financial Secretary's announcement on Second Reading that the five-day pre-release period for social data would be aligned with the 40.5-hour period for market-sensitive economic data is welcome—and we welcome the confirmation of that by the Exchequer Secretary this evening—but it simply does not go far enough and will be insufficient to restore trust in official figures. Lord Turnbull and others were right to say that a new norm of 40.5 hours is "completely ridiculous." According to the evidence of the Royal Statistical Society to the Treasury Sub-Committee, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Poland allow no pre-release access at all. France allows one hour and Australia three hours, and in both cases access is restricted to a handful of key economic statistics.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks pointed out, it is remarkably difficult to track down the information on who is entitled to what data under the current pre-release rules. One has to find that by hunting through different departmental websites; no centralised site sets out all the data and there is no standardised format to present them.

Angela Eagle: Will the hon. Lady admit that the current confused pre-release system, which led to the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) trawling websites—probably late one night—trying to find out what the situation was, will be much improved by the standardisation and transparency of the system that the Government propose? Surely she will admit that, even if they are not precisely what she wants, these are real, lasting and welcome improvements to the current confused and patchy pre-release system.

Theresa Villiers: I am afraid that I can only respond exactly as I did to the Minister's previous intervention. We simply do not know that, because the board is not to be allowed to set the pre-release rules. We will not know what those rules are until the Minister chooses to submit draft secondary legislation for this House to consider. I hope that we may see a clearer and more transparent way of ascertaining who is entitled to pre-release access, but I am afraid that at present there are no guarantees that that will happen.
	This House should also note that allowing the board to decide the rules has the advantage of allowing them to evolve flexibly over time, without the need for new secondary legislation. As I said, it is a concern that the draft secondary legislation has yet to be published. I do hope that it will be forthcoming very soon, if only because it may well assist in resolving any difference of view between this House and the other place.
	I turn to three arguments put by the Government in defence of their position during discussion of the Bill. First, they argue that Ministers need a lengthy period of advance notice in order to prepare a policy response. However, neither today nor in previous debates has it ever been satisfactorily explained why Ministers cannot cope with more significant restrictions on pre-release rules, given that their counterparts in many countries get only two or three hours' notice or no early access at all. As the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) pointed out in Committee, our civil servants are supposed to be among the best in the world. Many are recruited from the highest echelons of our education system, and I cannot see why the Minister is not confident that they can respond quickly to statistical data, or why they need so much more time than civil servants in other countries. Whatever the case for extensive pre-release for sensitive economic data that might move markets and require advance planning, in order to prevent general release being greeted with instability and uncertainty, such arguments are much weaker for departmental "social" data, in respect of which many of the problems relating to release practices have arisen.
	Secondly, the Government have argued that, because a case can be made for retention of pre-release in principle in order to facilitate the orderly running of the economy and of government, that justifies retention of political control over the rules that regulate pre-release. However, that argument simply does not stand up. I know that many in the statistical community would indeed have liked to see pre-release abolished altogether. However, if we give the board the power to set the rules, it would be highly likely, after consultation and reflection, to put forward proposals to retain pre-release—although with, I hope, a significant tightening of the current rules.
	It should also be borne in mind that however tough the rules that the board eventually chose to adopt—were it given that option—it would be likely to retain the flexibility to grant exceptional early access to data in the event of emergencies or exceptional circumstances. That has always been the case in the past in this country, and it is the practice in other countries such as New Zealand. In any event, amendment No. 13 blows a hole in the Government's argument by specifically removing from the board the option to abolish pre-release altogether.
	The Government's third argument is that this issue is so important that Parliament must take the decision. Frankly, that is a mere fig leaf. The Minister knows as well as any Member that it is highly unusual for the Government to encounter problems in getting their secondary legislation through the House. What Ministers want in terms of secondary legislation, Ministers generally get.

Angela Eagle: Does the hon. Lady welcome my earlier announcement that we will publish a draft form of the statutory arrangement for consultation with the House?

Theresa Villiers: I certainly do welcome that, and I hope that publication takes place as soon as possible.
	In any event, the underlying thrust of the legislation is to take key decisions on statistics out of the political arena. The Government have never told us what it is about pre-release that is qualitatively different from the rules governing official statistics, and which justifies these rules being treated in a different way. Indeed, their very importance is all the more reason for including them in the new reformed structures, rather than specifically exempting them.
	The Opposition do not believe that any political capital should be made from the early release of statistics. We believe that there is a real problem with the Government's deliberate exclusion of pre-release from these arrangements, which are intended to guarantee that official statistics are produced independently and free of political interference. Retaining ministerial control over pre-release is a shot in the arm for those who are suspicious of Government interference in official figures. If the Prime Minister really wants to make this Bill the next major step in reforming the economic governance of the UK, he should include pre-release rules within the overall reform. If he was serious about change—if he was serious about moving to a more open and honest form of government, and about a break with the Blair years—he would not be clinging to the power to determine pre-release rules. The truth is that he simply cannot let go. Just as the Treasury's grip on this issue can be removed only on the new Prime Minister's moving out of that Department, we cannot prise his fingernails off pre-release. He knows the political capital that excessively wide pre-release rules can give, and he simply is not prepared to give it up. That shows that his 10 years of spin and manipulation from No. 11 are likely to be followed by more of the same from No. 10.

Vincent Cable: I very much echo the comments of the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers). Indeed, we have had a common approach to this crucially important issue, about which we continue to feel strongly, and my colleagues in the other place, particularly Lord Newby, contributed to some of the Lords amendments. This is probably the most important part of the Bill, and the Government's reluctance to give way on this central principle enormously detracts from what is otherwise very good and positive legislation.
	The most crucial and substantive of this long string of amendments is No. 15. It deals with clause 11, which deletes any reference to the board's having competence in the area of pre-release. Also crucial is amendment No. 12, which would apply the code of conduct specifically to the conditions and timing of pre-release. The arguments have been very well rehearsed and the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet has been through them again, so I need not do so. Rather, I shall simply highlight one or two key points.
	The hon. Lady referred to Lord Moser, who is an enormously important and authoritative figure in this field, having established in the 1970s the professional basis for the statistics service in its modern form. He is completely politically impartial and an enormous source of authority on this subject. The hon. Lady touched on some of his comments, and I will quote in a slightly more expanded way his telling comments during the introduction to the debate on amendments tabled in the other place. He said:
	"The way in which the Bill is drafted to deal with this issue is astonishing. Given that these matters are so obviously central to trust and confidence, which is what the Bill is all about, one might have expected it to deal with them positively and helpfully by making them a central responsibility of the new board and central to the code. In fact, almost the opposite emerges."
	That is a pretty devastating indictment from somebody who approaches this issue professionally and without any political axe to grind.
	As the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet said, there are many professionals and other people who approach this issue with the interests of the statistics service and the integrity of government in mind—such as the Statistics Commission, which had oversight of it until very recently—and who have argued for no pre-release at all. Indeed, she cited seven countries to which that applies.
	The Minister said in her introduction that we should be pleased that there has been some improvement on the status quo, and it is certainly true that producing some sense of order and reducing at least some of the pre-release to 40 hours is an improvement. However, that should be set against a context in which the quality and standard of pre-release have deteriorated greatly over time. To quote Lord Moser again, he said:
	"It is...sadly true that things have slipped a great deal since 2000, when the last reforms were made...Now they are more lax than anywhere else or than they have ever been before, which...is harmful not only to the statistical world but also to the Government as a whole."
	That is a scathing indictment of how the system operates.
	In the debates in this place, it is now common ground that there are some arguments for pre-release. It is worth going back to the comments in the other place by Lord Turnbull, who approaches the issue not from an ideological point but from the pragmatic view of someone who operated the system of pre-release. He accepts the principle in limited instances. He said:
	"I have defended the principle of pre-release, which I think is consistent with the way we operate ministerial accountability."
	That is the Government's case and the former chief civil servant accepted the Government's fundamental principle. Indeed, most of us do not dispute that basic issue of theology. However, Lord Turnbull continued:
	"Nevertheless I support the central thrust of this group of amendments—that responsibility for this should be given to the Statistics Board, which should settle these matters after consulting with Ministers."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 May 2007; Vol. 691, c. 1075-78.]
	He is trying to find a way to reconcile the principle of pre-release with the need to avoid abuse.
	The core issue is that of timing. Most of us have recognised that there is a distinction between different kinds of Government statistics, and there is a particular problem with market-sensitive data. Let us try to be as helpful as possible to the Government and look at other countries that are close to the British system and could be used as a model: the Canadians are often cited as using pre-release. The Canadians allow pre-release of market-sensitive data to officials at 2 pm the previous day, but Ministers are allowed it only at 5 pm the previous day, after markets have closed. There is a recognition that pre-release of market-sensitive data to Ministers must be done under tight conditions. In France, the pre-release time is one hour, as the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet mentioned.
	The key case is the US, because market-sensitive data there have so much more impact on the world economy than anywhere else. There has been a continuing debate about what happens in the US, because the National Statistical Society told us that the US President has only 30 minutes with the data, but the Treasury researched it with the embassy in the US and found that in certain narrow circumstances the President has access the evening before. That is far more restrictive than anything the Government are contemplating in this country. In terms of the amount of time allowed, the Government are being implausibly and unrealistically indulgent.
	In the case of other data, we accept the basic principle of ministerial accountability. Ministers have to be able to explain what has happened on their watch, but that is different from giving them an opportunity to spin and dissimulate. The issue is the length of time, and we tabled amendments suggesting four-hour limits and the Select Committee suggested three hours. We could play with numbers, but what is needed is a professional judgment from the statistics board, and the purpose of the Lords amendments was to ensure that that is where the locus of the decision resides.

John Gummer: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of a single example that the Government have been able to cite which shows that Britain is different from any other European country, or the US or Canada or any other democratic society?

Vincent Cable: No, there is no such example and no attempt has been made to justify the Government's approach in that kind of rational, evidence-based way. It has simply been stated as a matter of principle that Britain should have pre-release, because we have traditions and they should be continued. That strikes me as a weak basis for an argument.
	Why are the Government so stubborn on this point, given that they have been so reasonable on so many of the other key issues? It is difficult to fathom and the perfectly reasonable question that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) just asked has not been answered. We know that there are intelligent Ministers and officials dealing with this issue in the Treasury, so why cannot they get their heads around this problem?
	An interesting theory was advanced in the other place by the Conservative spokesman, who claimed to have been told that there was a serious division of opinion between the Treasury and the rest of Whitehall, with an unholy coalition of Ministers in other Departments determined to cling on to the existing pre-release arrangements. Apparently, the Treasury is willing to compromise because it can see the logic of the argument, but the other Departments are not. I do not expect the Exchequer Secretary to confirm that, but it provides a possible explanation for what has been going on. We feel that the Lords amendments are reasonable and we shall oppose any attempt by the Government to reject them.

Michael Fallon: I, too, support the Lords in their amendments, especially Nos. 12 and 15. Like the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), I do not understand why the Government, who have been so flexible and reasonable—they have listened to some of the arguments put forward on other issues, especially moving the oversight of the statistics board from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office—find it impossible to move at all on the issue of pre-release. They are completely out of line with any other international practice, not simply on timing—40 hours advance notice as against three or four hours elsewhere—but on control. What is the point of bringing legislation to the House and making the statistics board properly independent if the one issue that is vital to the public perception of independence is then taken out of the board's control and left in the hands of Ministers, albeit approved by Parliament? Of course, it should be a matter for the board, not simply to supervise, but to regulate, via the code.
	If the Minister is wedded to the idea of parliamentary approval, why not give the code some proper parliamentary backing? The present position is nonsense. There are far too many officials involved. If one checks the website, one sees that it has lists of 30 or 40 officials. Many of the lists are out of date, and I would welcome it if they were tidied up. But far more officials, Ministers, private offices and special advisers are given access to such material than in any other country in the world.
	The number of hours is also way out of line with international practice. The Government cling to a position that is opposed by everybody else, including the Treasury Committee. We supported tightening up the system, as did former Ministers on the Committee, including the Exchequer Secretary herself. The other place wants it tidied, as do the outfitters to the Government, Lords Turnbull and Moser, who have dealt with such issues before. I cannot see how the Government's position is tenable. It is for the Exchequer Secretary to worry about whether her own position is tenable, having signed up to a report that recommended the reverse of what the Government now propose.

Angela Eagle: Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that I resign as soon as I have arrived?

Michael Fallon: I do not think that the tenability of the Exchequer Secretary's position is quite as important as the overall issue, which is one of privilege. To have access to the information before the public see it is a matter of privilege, and to leave it to Ministers themselves to decide the extent of that privilege is wholly wrong. I hope that we will support the Lords in their amendments.

Fiona Mactaggart: I wish to speak on this group as it seems the only opportunity to raise an issue that I have consistently raised during the passage of the Bill, which is: on what basis does public confidence in our statistical service rest?
	Many Opposition Members who have spoken have suggested that public confidence in our statistical service depends on the way in which statistics are handled by politicians, the pre-release arrangements and so on. That issue is dealt with by this group of amendments. However, I urge the Minister—whom I am glad to see on the Front Bench—to recognise that public confidence is based most strongly on the accuracy of our statistics. I am profoundly concerned that none of the debates on the Bill has focused sufficiently on creating a legal framework that guarantees accuracy.
	The sets of estimates, which may or may not be pre-released—on which this group of amendments is mostly closely focused—and which the Office for National Statistics issues between censuses, are in many cases profoundly unreliable. The best way to shake public confidence in our statistical service is by producing wrong statistics. The higher education participation rate is not calculated using ONS statistics because of its flawed estimates of the shape of the class structure of our society.
	The grants to local authorities, however, are issued on the basis of those flawed statistics. Members will have heard me describe how my constituency of Slough has been damaged, for example, by the fact that in the 2001 census many migrants to the town did not identify their former address, although it was overseas, and by the smoothing arrangements in the estimation that give towns such as Windsor and Wokingham the same kind of balance of migrants as Slough.
	I am at risk of straying from the issue with which this group of amendments is concerned. However, I urge the Minister, in her new responsibilities, to ensure that the legal framework for delivery of our statistical services guarantees not only their independence but their accuracy at every stage. If we do not make sure that they are accurate, we will not have public confidence in our statistics.

Brooks Newmark: I, too, welcome the Minister to her new position. I also invite her, however, to take a new position on ministerial pre-release access.
	The Minister will be well aware that when the Treasury Sub-Committee, on which she and I sat, considered the independence of statistics last year, our guiding principle and second recommendation was:
	"Regardless of the detail of the Government's final proposals, we consider it essential that the Government ensures that its proposals secure both sufficient independence and sufficient perceived independence in the statistical system."
	For the record at least, I note that she put her name to that recommendation, and to the whole report, notwithstanding her long, rambling excuse as to why she signed up to it but did not attend half the meetings.
	I remind the Minister, however, that the then Financial Secretary, the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey) told the Committee during evidence that he
	"would certainly accept that the pre-release arrangements contribute to the perception of interference in statistics."
	He also said:
	"Part of the drive to legislate now to entrench the independence is to deal with some of the problems that are still there in perception."
	Actual independence and perceived independence are intimately connected, and the Government's rejection of the Lords amendments on pre-release strikes a blow against both.
	There are concrete examples of abuse from the Statistics Commission. Whether we consider the leak of unemployment figures to the "Today" programme, or the former Prime Minister letting them slip while at a TUC conference, pre-release has certainly had problems. The perception of abuse, however, is more important, as has been acknowledged by the Phillis review and many other commentators since. Lord Moser, about whom we have heard much today and whose name was on the amendments, said that the Government's approach to the issue was "astonishing". He said:
	"No other single change would send a clearer signal to the public and users than this."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 May 2007; Vol. 459, c. 1076.]

John Gummer: The Government's only argument in defence of their position is that things have always been like this. Is not it odd to find a Labour Government saying that they are doing something because tradition demands it? Why do not they apply that argument to rather more worthy causes?

Brooks Newmark: It would indeed be good if the Government applied that argument to traditional causes; as my right hon. Friend and I both represent rural areas, one in particular comes to mind. The only tradition to which the new Prime Minister seems to be clinging is that of being a control freak and spin doctor. The longer that he can control and have that information, the more he can spin it to the public as he wishes. That is the tradition that we want to destroy. It would be bad enough if the omission of pre-release were accidental, but it is quite explicit. As I have said previously, it is the black hole at the centre of the Bill.
	I am delighted that the Government have given in to Opposition pressure over the transfer of residual ministerial responsibility to the Cabinet Office, although, again, I am rather cynical, because at the head of the Cabinet Office is the First Lord of the Treasury, the ex-Chancellor—I will go no further into that. The Government's refusal to move on the issue creates the increasing suspicion that Ministers have something to hide by not ensuring that pre-release is subject to the code. The double standards that have been set up between the board's code of practice and the ministerial code on pre-release threaten to undermine the perception of independence. We are in danger of ending up with legislation to entrench independence that does not address a significant perceived failing of that independence.
	Lord Desai pursued a fascinating line of argument in another place when he suggested that
	"governments do not gain much advantage from pre-release. Whatever advantage is gained is quickly dissipated partly by incompetence and partly by the fact that clever people can see through any spin that statistics may be given."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 May 2007; Vol. 459, c. 1081.]
	Will the Minister confirm whether the Government intend to rely on their own incompetence and the cleverness of the Opposition in seeing through spin to justify continued ministerial control of pre-release arrangements?
	The truth is that allowing ministerial pre-release access to be controlled by ministerial fiat could not give a more effective shot in the arm to anyone with suspicions about Government interference in statistics. The Minister is merely the latest in a long line of ministerial beneficiaries of pre-release of statistics, but I hope that she will consent to be among the last crop of Ministers to control the rules governing pre-release directly.

Stewart Hosie: On 13 March, at column 217, the then Financial Secretary, the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), said about pre-release arrangements:
	"The public have a right to expect, and the British media have come to demand, that Government Ministers account for the impact and implications of policy when statistics are released—not hours afterwards or in the days that follow."—[ Official Report, 13 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 217.]
	I happen to agree entirely. But the simple fact that a Minister or Department is obliged to comment quickly after the release of a statistical series does not and should never entitle them to access to it for some hours—or almost two days—in advance.
	I shall speak briefly, but I hope that I can get to the nub of the issue. To paraphrase the new Minister, she said early in her contribution that because Ministers have to deal with the consequences of the publication of data, or perhaps provide mitigation if something happens, that makes them the people best placed to set the time scales. Nothing could be further from the truth. It may suit them to set the time scales, because, as the previous Financial Secretary said, they will have to respond quickly, so they need a lot of time to work out what they will say, but that is completely back to front. It might suit them if they are going to spin a narrow part of the statistics that look beneficial and can cover a multitude of sins elsewhere in the small print of a document. It might suit them if they want to discount the bad news early, knowing that another announcement is to come the following day or the day after that to cover it up. But if the Minister is serious about transparency and if she and the Department are serious about removing perceptions of spin and cover-up, I have yet to hear an argument today as to why the Government will not hand over the responsibility for the code and the creation of time scales to the national statistician or the independent board.
	The Minister in her opening remarks said that there was broad agreement on both sides of the House that, in the case of market sensitive data, there was general agreement that there should be proper pre-release. That is right and proper. But for the normal publication of normal social statistics on non-market sensitive economic data, if the Government are serious about transparency, there is no longer any justification for the Government to keep even 40.5 hours of pre-release access to themselves. Therefore, I ask them to look at the matter.
	I know that the Minister is new, and I am sure that she has been studying the previous debates in  Hansard and reading through briefings by the ton, but this is, as she said earlier, the main point of contention in the Bill. Why do we not go collectively, in the big tent consensual politics, with a new progressive consensus, forward together—and other catch phrases that I cannot quite remember—to deliver the transparency that the House wants, including, I am sure, many Labour Back Benchers, and that the people expect and the users of statistics demand to remove the perception of fiddling, unnecessary spin and discounting of bad news when statistics are published?

Angela Eagle: I know from some of my reading over the weekend that we have had a debate similar to those during the Bill's earlier stages. No one should deny the good intent of those on either side of the argument to have greater transparency and consistency across Departments in the way in which pre-release is dealt with. The system that the Government seek to put in place, with the alignment of pre-release times to 40.5 hours across market and non-market statistics, and down from five days in some cases, is an advance in consistency and a tightening up of the rules. Hon. Members on both sides of the argument should not deny that the Government's intention in some of the changes that have been outlined during the Bill's passage by my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (John Healey) was to standardise, tighten and reassure the House on these matters.
	There is a broad acceptance of the principle—accepted in a variety of instances, some narrower for Opposition Members than perhaps for others—that in some circumstances at least pre-release should happen, which obviously I welcome. There is also an acceptance that a reasonable number of hours should be allowed, but no agreement on the number of hours. The Government have reduced that to 40.5 hours, but there are various opinions ranging from that of the Treasury Committee at three hours, to that of members of the other House at one hour or 30 minutes, and a range in between—from 40.5 all the way down to zero.
	In this debate, we see two different ways of achieving a system that will tighten and standardise the requirements and methodology of pre-release. On the one hand, the Government have said that they will introduce the system in the form of an affirmative statutory instrument, which will be debated upstairs and which therefore will have the imprimatur of Parliament, rather than by a code of practice that the board can produce, which Opposition Members have suggested is a better way forward. Given the wide welcome that we have for the basic approaches in the Bill to making statistics more independent, this is really the only matter that has raised people's blood pressure. Reading the controversies that have raged throughout the Bill's passage, I am not sure that the Government have been given the proper credit for the improvements that they have suggested in their methodology for creating a system for pre-release. First, we have the affirmative resolution procedure; secondly, my predecessor has already said that the matter will be reviewed after 12 months to see whether change is needed; and today, I have undertaken to issue the statutory instrument in draft form for consultation, which again allows the structure of the system to be debated.

Theresa Villiers: The Minister seems to have put forward two arguments today: first that we should continue to operate pre-release in the same way because that is how it has been done for years, which I do not find very convincing, and secondly that what is being proposed is not ideal but is an improvement on what has gone before. Perhaps the Government should make a more significant improvement and give the board the power to decide this critically important question.

Angela Eagle: I do not accept the hon. Lady's interpretation of what I have said. I said earlier that the different approaches to pre-release that we see internationally tend to have grown out of custom and practice, which is why they are of slightly different lengths and why some countries agree in principle with pre-release while others do not have pre-release.

John Gummer: It is true that the time scales are all different, but all have one thing in common—they are very much shorter. What is it about Britain that makes us utterly different from any other country in the world, in the sense that what the Minister is suggesting is some 10 times as long as most people would have?

Angela Eagle: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will also give us credit for reducing that time limit from five days in many instances to 40.5 hours. We can have debates about the length of time, as we are doing with the other place. I am here to oppose the amendments that were passed in the other place and to argue that we should stick with 40.5 hours. But I hope that he will also accept that improvements have been announced during the Bill's passage with respect to the current situation on pre-release, and I hope that he will welcome them. He may not think that they go far enough, and that is a matter of opinion, but I hope that he will at least give us credit for the improvements that we have proposed.

Theresa Villiers: The Exchequer Secretary has said repeatedly that the reduction in the time limit to 40.5 hours across the board is "an improvement" to the current rules. Why will she not improve them further by reducing the time period further?

Angela Eagle: Because my duty at the Dispatch Box tonight is to say that the Government think that 40.5 hours is the appropriate time for pre-release, and that is what I will do.
	I do not want to detain the House for too long on an argument that has raged throughout the passage of the Bill, but I do not accept the Opposition's view that organising the board under a code of practice is superior to an affirmative resolution for secondary legislation under a statutory instrument of the House. A draft will be put out for consultation, as I announced earlier today, so we will be able to consider it. There will not simply be a yes or no vote.
	In addition, there is the promise of a review after 12 months when the board is up and running and when we will be able to see how the new, more consistent arrangements for pre-release have worked in practice. That is a robust and welcome improvement in the existing system. The code of practice might be another way of dealing with the situation, but it is not something the Government feel minded to support at present, which is why I oppose the amendment and I hope that colleagues will support our motion to disagree.

Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment:—
	 The House divided: Ayes 297, Noes 172.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment disagreed to.

Clause 10
	 — 
	Code of Practice for National Statistics

Lords amendment: No. 11.

Theresa Villiers: I beg to move amendment (a) to the Lords amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 16 to 19 and Nos. 31 and 39, and amendments thereto.

Theresa Villiers: We very much welcome the Government's change of heart on the issues covered by this group of amendments. Although the amendments do not go as far as we would like, they represent a significant change to the scope of the Bill and the impact of the code of practice. In essence, our arguments on the code and the distinction between national and official statistics—those issues are at the heart of the amendments—have been simple and threefold.
	First, the two-tier distinction between the two types of Government statistics is unnecessary and confusing and could undermine confidence in official figures outside the scope of national statistics. Secondly, if it is worth producing a Government statistic on an issue, it is worth producing it according to the standards of integrity and impartiality set out in the code. There is no reason to believe that the board cannot be trusted to come up with a proportionate and workable approach to the enforcement of the code across the range of different Government statistical activities. Thirdly, to leave Ministers to determine whether the code and the scrutiny of the board apply to their departmental statistics undermines the credibility of the reforms and in effect allows Ministers to decide whether to opt into the new framework or stay out of it.
	Throughout the debate, both Opposition parties pointed out that the structure proposed in the Bill gave Ministers too much power to keep the statistics board away from sensitive departmental statistics—to keep official figures in the shadows and prevent light from being shone on the darker corners of departmental statistical activity. In effect, it gave Ministers the right to say to the board, "Thus far and no further."
	Widespread disquiet was expressed during the consultation about the distinction between national and official statistics and the fact that the code would not be applied across all Government statistical activities. That disquiet came from organisations such as the Royal Statistical Society, the Statistics Commission, the Audit Commission, the Market Research Society, the Health and Social Care Information Centre, and the FDA—to name but a few.
	Let us return to the comments of Lord Moser, as we have done on a number of occasions. He described the distinction between the two types of statistics as meaningless and actually harmful in relation to public trust. Lord Turnbull hit the nail on the head on Second Reading in the other place when he said that the way in which the Government have approached this issue
	"can only give rise to suspicion, even if unwarranted, that the Government want either to tolerate a Ryman league of second-rate statistics not covered by the code or, worse, that Ministers want to keep certain statistics in the lower league so that they can get away with things that are outside the disciplines of the code."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 26 March 2007; Vol. 690, c. 1484.]
	I am afraid that the protestations of the former Financial Secretary, the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), that the prestige of having departmental figures awarded the status of national statistics would motivate Ministers to propose them for inclusion in the board's new independent system of scrutiny and regulation were risible. I cannot believe that even he could have taken that seriously—no one else has, from the Treasury Sub-Committee onwards.
	Thankfully, the Government have gone on a journey. Little by little, in the face of pressure in the House and the other place, they have retreated. At first, they said that the idea of extending the scope of the code of practice was, to use the then Financial Secretary's words "extraordinary", "absurd" and "impractical". He confirmed that the Government expected the code
	"to be a model of good practice for official statistics, and we expect the board to promote it as such." ——[Official Report, Statistics and Registration Service Public Bill Committee, 18 January 2007; c. 153.]
	We then had the formal cave-in when the Government tabled amendments in the other place to remove the formal restriction of the code to national statistics by removing the word "national" from its title and leaving it as a code for statistics instead. Finally, Lord Davies of Oldham, speaking on behalf of the Government, went still further and said that the code, of course, applied to "official statistics"
	The Opposition warmly welcomed that statement. It was what we had been calling for since Second Reading and what the former Financial Secretary used to oppose. Our amendments are entirely consistent with the statement made by Lord Davies. They would rename the code so that it was a code of practice for official statistics. They would confirm the destination that the Government have reached by making good on the noble Lord's undertaking that the code should apply to official statistics. I hope that the Government will accept our amendments, if they intend to fulfil the promise made by the noble Lord.
	Our amendments also serve another important function by clarifying the confusion that has crept into the Government's position. The Government's journey was not quite over, even with the statement made by Lord Davies to which I have referred. Despite their starting point of restricting the application of the code only to national statistics, they ended up not only conceding the point on official statistics, but actually suggesting that the code should apply outside government. That would certainly be consistent with a common-sense interpretation of their amendments in the other place that removed the word "national" from the code and left it as purely a code of practice for statistics.
	Lord Davies confirmed that sudden and unexpected switch when he said on Report in the other place:
	"I have said that our crucial distinction is between national and official statistics, but the board will identify clear criteria for a code that ought to obtain with certain other statistics which may not be official but nevertheless may be of significance to the public realm. The board will be looked to to set the standard by which everything else is judged."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 18 June 2007; Vol. 693, c. 45.]
	That announcement caused consternation in the statistical community. It came totally out of the blue. After lengthy consultation and extensive debate, the Government had given no indication whatsoever that they intended the code or the board to have relevance outside the sphere of the Government's statistical work. Richard Alldritt of the Statistics Commission said that the Government had got themselves
	"in a tangle on this".
	I am inclined to agree.
	Lord Jenkin referred to a number of concerned statisticians in the debate on this matter in the other place, including the institute for economic and social research at Essex university. The institute warned of the danger that developing a code that would apply to statistics outside the Government would risk diluting the necessary principles that should apply to all official statistics. The need to remedy that confusion is another of the reasons why the Opposition have tabled amendments to the Lords amendments.
	There has also been a partial capitulation from the Government on the legal enforceability of the code. When the Bill was published, it was striking that it did not oblige anyone to obey the code of practice, despite the Government's promise to give that statutory backing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) memorably put it, the Bill gave the code
	"fewer teeth than the highway code".—[ Official Report, 13 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 192.]
	We were told that the board would have the power to promote the code as a standard for all official statistics, but the Government failed to say how they would enforce the code. We have argued that the board should be given regulatory and supervisory powers, which, as the Government admitted in Committee, the Bill did not give it. Under the Bill, as it was drafted, the board would have had, to use the then Financial Secretary's words, "only a softer function"—a power to audit and assess, not to supervise or regulate. As Dr. Ivan Fellegi, one of the world's leading statisticians, has pointed out, that would be not very different to the Statistics Commission's power to name and shame. The power would effectively be only one of exhortation.
	Obliging people to obey the code would give the board real authority to ensure that good practice was observed right across government. While we would have preferred the code to bind all in government who produce statistics, Lords amendment No. 17 is an important step forward because it at least imposes a duty to obey the code on those who produce national statistics. The Government finally seem to be getting the point that we have been making from the outset: the code should be applied to the people who produce statistics, rather than confined to a means of assessing particular sets of figures.
	It was welcome that Lord Davies made it clear in another place that the duty to obey the code applied not just to those responsible for producing national statistics, but all those who handled them, such as people preparing briefings for Ministers, and press officers. That is vital because many of the problems in the system relate to such officials—the policy and press officials in charge of interpreting and disseminating policy— not the statistical boffins compiling the data.
	The Government's journey has included important changes to the board's role in initiating the assessment process to decide whether a particular set of figures can qualify for the kitemark of a national statistic. We have made the point again and again that it was a fundamental flaw in the proposals that Ministers could keep their departmental figures out of the new framework for independent statistics merely by refusing to nominate them for assessment by the board. In such a situation, the board's only power was to name and shame the Minister in question. Its powers would have been no stronger than those of the Statistics Commission, which, valuable though its work has been, everyone agreed needed to be strengthened. We welcome the Government's about-turn on that vital issue. The process set out in Lords amendment No. 19 is rather cumbersome and does not go as far as we would like because it does not give the board unfettered power to initiate an assessment of whether a statistic complies with the code, but by formalising the process and requiring a Minister to answer to Parliament if he or she refuses to nominate a statistic for assessment the board will have much greater say in whether an assessment can be initiated. The Lords amendment represents a significant change to the Bill because it addresses a critical question.
	The then Financial Secretary's key argument for maintaining a two-tier system was that some statistics were more important than others. The decision on nomination effectively determined the borderline between the two types of statistics. As such, the decision was simply too important to be left only to Ministers. The then Financial Secretary acknowledged in Committee that that issue
	"cuts to the heart of the proposals in the Bill and the concerns that some have expressed." ——[Official Report, Statistics and Registration Service Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2007; c. 207.]
	We agreed with his analysis, which was why we pressed the point throughout our proceedings on the Bill. He said he expected the new system to evolve over time and embrace a wider range of statistics. Under the Bill as originally drafted, the pace of that evolution would have been determined by Ministers, even though the reform was designed to reduce their power and influence. Lords amendment No. 19 will give the board more power to drive the evolutionary process to which the Minister referred. However, it also places a burden on Parliament to back the statistics board and to force Ministers to yield their statistics for proper scrutiny.
	Leaving the board with inadequate powers on figures outside the scope of national statistics would leave a big hole in the legislation. As the House might recall from our earlier debates, a number of important Government figures are not national statistics. Indeed, Lord Davies admitted that the category of national statistics was "very limited" and that far more than 20 per cent. of official statistics fell outside the scope of the national statistics system. We believe and have argued throughout that there is no reason why important departmental figures should be subject to a less onerous regime than others, particularly where departmental figures have given rise to more problems than those produced by the Office for National Statistics. For example, according to the Library, since the 2000 reforms there has been a net increase of only 25 national statistics. We believe that there is no sensible reason why statistics on, for example, cervical cancer screening in Wales, small business survival rates, or armed forces medical discharges, which are not national statistics, deserve less scrutiny than the cider survey or the monthly statement on bricks, blocks and cement, which are.
	We hope that the board will use the process set out in amendment No. 19 to fill the hole in the legislation and to extend the range of statistics that are subject to the full rigour of the reforms set out in the Bill. We hope that the board will receive the strong support and encouragement of the House; it will certainly have ours.

Vincent Cable: I simply wish to acknowledge that this is an important area of debate and that the basic differences between the Government on the one hand and Opposition Members and the statistical community on the other have largely been reconciled. I accept that considerable progress has been made, and the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), who was formerly the Minister with responsibility for the Bill, contributed substantially to that. There are essentially two overlapping issues. The first is whether it is useful to distinguish between official and national statistics. The purist's view is that one should not distinguish between them as they are equally important—or rather, they are in a continuum of importance—and it is not helpful to make an arbitrary distinction.
	In our exchanges in the House, we accepted that there is a rough hierarchy and that some statistics are important and merit being described as national while others are less important—indeed we are talking about hundreds if not thousands of statistics. I certainly accepted the distinction itself as conceptually sensible. The key issue was whether Ministers should have a responsibility for deciding what statistics fall into what category. Concern was expressed in the House and by the Opposition in the other place that if there were not proper safeguards in place through the code, official statistics would be misused by Ministers. My understanding is that that difficulty has been overcome and that, through the board, all statistics will be subject to the proper discipline of the code. That has largely met our concerns.
	A subsidiary issue—it may just be a misunderstanding, and it may just have arisen from bad drafting—was briefly alluded to by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers): inadvertently, the Bill now covers large areas of statistical information that are not the product of Government at all. One of the examples mentioned in the other place is particularly close to my heart because I used to work in the oil industry. One of the main tasks of my opposite number, the chief economist of BP, was to produce the set of oil statistics that are the gold plate for the industry, and that are accepted as the best source of oil and gas information in the world. The question has been asked whether those statistics will be subject to the legislation. After all, they are produced voluntarily to enhance the reputation of that company, and are not in any sense a requirement so it would be odd if they were subject to the legislation. However, since the question has been asked, it would be helpful if the Minister clarified whether such privately generated statistics, which are immensely useful but neither official nor national, are in some sense covered by the Bill, whether inadvertently or intentionally.
	The purpose of my intervention is simply to accept that as a result of a sensible exchange in debate, the key point of the Opposition parties has been conceded.

Angela Eagle: I am pleased about the general welcome that has been given by both Opposition parties to the progress that has been made. I wish the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) had not described that progress as retreat, capitulation and an about-turn, and that she had not issued press releases that talk about U-turns. It does not encourage the Government to think about being more flexible during the parliamentary process when as soon as they employ such an approach they are treated to such epithets. I prefer the interpretation of the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) and his welcome for the considerable progress that has been made. If the hon. Lady used that type of language, we might be able to make even more progress in coming to a consensus on the important matters that we are discussing. Being accused of retreat, capitulation and about-turns does not always encourage the Government to listen to debates in the way that they ought.
	I ask the House to resist the hon. Lady's amendments to the Lords amendments for reasons that I will come to shortly. Instead, I ask the House to support the amendments from the other place, which clarify the Government's intention on the question of scope of the application of the board's code of practice and compliance with it. Those amendments will enhance the role of the board in the assessment process—an issue to which the hon. Lady rightly referred.
	The amendments from the other place are aimed at addressing a number of concerns about the coverage of the statistical system that will be established by the Bill and will clarify and further underscore the Government's intentions as regards a number of matters relating to the code of practice. They will also address the issue of official and national statistics, which I believe will add even more transparency to the new statistical system we are creating. Our approach reflects the desire that the definitions used in the Bill should serve the statistical system and all those who use its outputs well, both now and in future. As such, the Government are concerned to ensure that the Bill includes as broad and as flexible a definition of "official statistics" as possible. I ask the House to consider the fact that legislation on statistics was last enacted in 1947. Now, 60 years down the line, we have another scintillating Bill, which hon. Members have spent many hours considering, so it may well be prudent to try to future-proof it in case it takes another 60 years to get another legislative vehicle before the House that we can use to change or improve our statistical systems.
	That is why, in their definition of national and official statistics, the Government have tried to future-proof the Bill, rather than to narrow it and make it inflexible. There may not be many other legislative vehicles around in which we can iron out any inflexibilities that we inadvertently leave in the Bill, hence the wider definitions that feature in it.
	Until the Bill, there had never been a legal definition of "official statistics", and there is no agreed international definition, so at the start of the Bill-drafting process it was not immediately clear what the best way was of defining the term. Initially, it was thought that it could be defined as Government Statistical Service output, but the Government wanted to avoid a definition that would unnecessarily limit the role envisaged for the board, given developments in statistical production, activity in Government, and the need to anticipate what might happen in the next 60 years. Members of the Government Statistical Service are no longer the sole producers of statistical information within Government, and many of the key statistics that the public use to judge the Government's performance come from administrative sources.
	The Government therefore concluded that the definition of "official statistics" should be as wide as possible, and should include all statistics produced by the 200-plus Government Departments and agencies, the devolved Administrations and
	"any other person acting on behalf of the Crown".
	Such a definition meets our goal of being both very wide and future-proof. As we opted for a very wide definition, it was necessary for us to focus and prioritise the application of the formal assessment against the code. That assessment is established in clauses 12 and 13. The Government's aim is to help to ensure that greater resources are devoted to those statistics that have relatively greater importance. That is where the idea, raised by the hon. Member for Twickenham, of a rough hierarchy comes in. When it comes to the question of what is a national statistic and what is an official statistic, many hon. Members have had good fun with the inconsistencies around the edges. At the weekend, I read about egg bulletins and all sorts of other things that I had not realised existed. But clearly, in general, there is a rough hierarchy and it is possible to identify the most important statistics to represent properly what is going on in the country's economy and socially. It is fairly easy to see what they are, and I am glad the rough hierarchy has been recognised in the House.
	It is important that we allow the new board to prioritise which areas it should consider for assessment first. If the board were legally bound to undertake formal assessments of the vast and ever expanding range of official statistics, that would not be a sensible way forward, in view of the likely resource implications both for the board and for those being assessed. I expect that added credibility will come from securing independent endorsement of the quality and integrity of a set of statistics.
	The code of practice has a special role to play in relation to the assessment of national statistics, but the Government have always intended—I am glad to clarify this through the Lords amendments—that the code of practice should be used across all official statistics, at least as a guide to best practice, to allow an assessment to be made of statistics in the official pool, rather than the national statistic pool. Amendments Nos. 11, 16, 18, 31 and 39 will change the name of the code to the code of practice for statistics. The change is aimed at making that intention more explicit, clarifying that the code applies not only to national statistics, but to the broader range of official statistics.
	The Government have decided that the legal name for the code should be the code of practice for statistics, which expresses succinctly and clearly exactly what the code is for. As we heard, Opposition Members tabled amendments in lieu of the amendments from the other place, which would alter the name again, to the code of practice for official statistics, which I must resist. As I have just said, the code will be applied across official statistics, but will have a particular role in relation to national statistics, as the code against which the board will assess statistics to determine their compliance, and whether or not to award national statistics status. Calling it the code for official statistics may be confusing and could imply that it refers only to those official statistics, and not to the subset that are national statistics.

Theresa Villiers: The Government have consistently resisted the argument that we should get rid of the two-tier system altogether because it causes confusion between official and national statistics. If they are confident that the man on the street can draw that distinction with ease, why are they worried that the title of the code of practice might cause confusion?

Angela Eagle: Dancing on the head of a pin occurs in this debate. It is clear that there is an acceptance in general, even if the hon. Lady does not share it, that there is a rough hierarchy of statistics. That grew out of the 2000 reforms. The national statistics now contain most of the most important series of statistics that have descriptive and research power with respect to how the country is doing, although I accept that around the edges there might be a little blurring as to whether a statistic should be national or official.
	The important thing is to indicate to the board that there should be a priority, and for accreditation purposes that should lie, naturally, with the most important series of statistics, which in almost all cases are encompassed in national statistics rather than official statistics. The changes and the Government amendments in the Lords, which I support, indicate that the board can search more widely if necessary, and Ministers can add to the tally of national statistics if they believe that that is reasonable.
	I accept that there has been a great deal of discussion in both Houses. The changes that were made in the House of Lords clarify the scope of national statistics and allow the board to look more widely at official statistics. The introduction of amendments that place an active duty on those who produce statistics to comply with the code, which was previously implicit, have made that explicit.
	The Government amendment places a duty on the board to comment on any official statistic that is problematic, and the Department must respond and lay before Parliament the reasons it will not change the way in which such statistics are compiled if the board has complained about their veracity or the technical way they are produced. That is a powerful new lever for the board, which the hon. Lady acknowledged in her opening remarks.
	That represents acceptable progress. For that reason, I support the Government amendment but oppose the amendments in lieu.

Theresa Villiers: I do not propose to press my amendment to a Division. I hope that Minister, given the way in which she called on me to respond, will take that as a consensual and constructive move on my part. I am concerned that she was wounded by the strength of the language that I used. She made it plain that the amendments were motivated by a constructive spirit on the part of the new Government. I suspect that the compromise amendments tabled by the Government in the House of Lords might have had something to do with the fact that they had just lost on pre-release by 196 votes to 133 and were facing impending defeat on these matters as well. The Minister can hardly claim that it was a particularly generous move, in the light of the defeat that they faced. On that note, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
	 Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	 Lords amendment No. 11 agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 12 to 15 disagreed to.
	 Government amendments (a) and (b) made to the words so restored to the Bill.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 16 to 19 agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 20 to 30 disagreed to.
	 Lords amendment No. 31 agreed to.

Clause 29
	 — 
	national statistician: executive functions

Lords amendment: No. 32.

Angela Eagle: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 33 to 38.

Angela Eagle: I seek the support of the House for the amendments from another place which seek to clarify the roles of the executive office under the national statistician's leadership and the head of assessment. Before I address the amendments, it may help Members if I remind them of the core governance model adopted in the Bill and why the amendments brought forward from another place help to deliver the clarity that we all seek. The Government are committed to the governance structure established in the Bill, in which the single legal entity charged with delivering on the functions contained in the Bill is the statistics board. We believe that a single structure is the most effective way to deliver greater independence for the ONS and independent scrutiny and oversight of the statistical system as a whole, while avoiding the creation of competing centres of statistical expertise.
	The Bill provides that single institutional structure with a board that is legally responsible and accountable for all the body's functions. In line with the principles of good corporate governance, the Bill establishes that the board will have a mix of executives and non-executives, although we are legislating to ensure that there will always be a clear non-executive majority.
	In common with other Departments and public bodies, professionals acting under the board's direction will, we expect, discharge the executive business. However, the legal authority to act on behalf of the statistics board flows through the board, and the board must therefore retain authority to act in relation to matters for which it is accountable. The question of clarity of roles has nevertheless been a concern in both this House and the other place during the passage of the Bill, and the Government have recognised that the Bill could benefit from the key executive roles being more clearly set out on the face of the Bill. The Bill as drafted, augmented by the amendments before us today, makes it clear that the key functions of the board will be carried out by executives under the leadership of the national statistician and the head of assessment, while the legal entity that is ultimately responsible for those functions is the board collectively.
	The broad thrust of the amendments is to give even greater clarity to the operational role of the national statistician and the executive office with respect to both the board and the head of assessment. Amendment No. 32 removes the existing references in clause 29 to the executive office, and amendment No. 35 inserts a new clause in their place explicitly to set out those of the board's functions that will be undertaken by the executive office under the leadership of the national statistician. Those include the development and maintenance of definitions, methodologies, classifications and standards for official statistics under clause 9, the production of statistics, such as the retail prices index, under clauses 18 and 19, and the provision of statistical services under clause 20.
	The other amendments are designed further to emphasise what has always been our intention—that within the single statistics board structure, there will be a clear separation in the production of statistics under clause 18 from the assessment function established in clauses 12 and 13. That reflects the need to avoid the clear conflict of interest that would arise if a person who was responsible for producing any given statistic also had a role in determining whether, in producing that statistic, the code of practice had been complied with. Clause 30 has been included to ensure that such a situation could not arise, following interventions on the matter in Committee in the other place, where the Government undertook to re-examine the drafting to see whether our intention could be made clearer. The result of that re-examination is this group of amendments, the aim of which is unequivocally to confirm and clarify on the face of the Bill the separation between staff working on the assessment of statistics and those working on statistical production.

Theresa Villiers: At the outset, I want to put it on record that I welcome this group of amendments.
	Throughout the debate, the Opposition have expressed concern about the complicated institutional structure established by the Bill. We have pointed out that the Bill blurs the function of the national statistician with that of the board, which gives rise to three concerns. First, it creates confusion as to who does what and who accounts to whom. Secondly, vesting production and scrutiny functions in the same institution, the board, gives rise to conflict of interest problems, which could undermine confidence in the new system. Thirdly, it gives insufficient weight to the importance of the role of the national statistician and fails to give sufficient detail on what that role should involve.
	Again, we welcome the Government amendments, which are a step in the right direction. We appreciate that this is a difficult issue to get right, and there are various structures around the world covering how statistical offices operate. The amendments flesh out the Government's underlying idea that the production functions attributed to the board will be carried out by an executive office headed by the national statistician. Essentially, the executive office will carry out the role now broadly performed by the ONS. The amendments give greater clarity to the separation of functions within a unitary board structure, providing for a clearer delineation between the production functions as the remit of the national statistician and the executive office and the scrutiny and executive functions, which will be carried out by the head of assessment.
	As with the other Government amendments that we have considered today, a number of issues are still unresolved. We remain concerned about the blurred lines of accountability in relation to the new structures. The board will still act as judge and jury where a complaint is made about the production of ONS statistics or statistics that are currently produced by the ONS. Where a complaint is made about a decision made by the national statistician or her executive office, the complaint will be made to the board. In a very real sense, however, the board will have been responsible for the decision in the first place, which raises the danger of undermining confidence in the board's ability to take an impartial decision on whether the complaint should be upheld, particularly where it decides to back the judgment of the national statistician.
	If the chairman of the board were to rule against the national statistician and issue a rebuke, he would be in the embarrassing position of issuing a rebuke to himself as the chairman of the body responsible for the decision in the first place. We also worry that the loss of the independent watchdog, with the merger of the Statistics Commission with the ONS, will remove one of the existing safeguards in our statistical system and could be seen as a step backwards in the quest that the Opposition and the Government share to secure independent statistics in which people can safely place their trust and confidence. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the incredibly valuable work of the Statistics Commission since its establishment in 2000, and I also pay tribute to the work done at the ONS.
	The Government have never satisfactorily explained how the national statistician can be chief executive of the board, when a major function of the board is scrutiny and assessment, in which we all accept that it would be inappropriate for her to be involved. We continue to regret the Government's rejection of our amendments, which would have made it plain that the national statistician is chief executive of the executive office and not chief executive of the board as a whole.
	The Government have not adduced an example of a structure genuinely comparable to the one that they are establishing. As the then Financial Secretary more or less admitted in Committee, we are in uncharted waters as far as the model chosen by the Government is concerned. We can only hope that the quality and abilities of the board and the national statistician can develop what Baroness Noakes described as "successful workarounds" in making the new framework operate successfully.
	Lastly, I want to repeat on record that I wish that the Government had taken this opportunity to articulate and strengthen the role of the national statistician. After all, as the Exchequer Secretary has said, statistics Bills do not come around very often. I do not know whether it will be another 60 years before this House again has the chance to discuss official statistics, but it could be some time before there is a major reform of the statistical system.
	It is unfortunate that the Government have missed this significant opportunity to encode in statute some important functions for the national statistician. These include providing co-ordination and planning of our decentralised statistical system, which it so desperately needs, and the vital task of providing the professional leadership that government statisticians need. When Ministers or policy officials try to push them around or misuse or spin their statistics, the statisticians need a heavyweight figure to back them. The success or failure of this reform in restoring trust in official statistics is inextricably linked with the status and authority not only of the board but of the national statistician.
	Although it does not have the highest profile, few issues are more important than the health and integrity of our statistical system. Without accurate data on the state of our economy and our country, we can neither hold the Government to account nor take well informed policy decisions. Without accurate statistics, the policymaker is in effect like a doctor left unable to take his patient's temperature or blood pressure. Partial or misleading statistics leave Government and citizens alike groping in the dark and can lead to serious mismanagement of critically important decisions for our nation's future. That is why independent statistics are a key part of modern economic governance, and that is why they form a key part of our triple lock to entrench macro-economic stability in this country. I hope that the reforms will help to remedy an increasingly serious lack of trust in official statistics which has intensified during the 10 years this Government have been in office.

Angela Eagle: I do not accept for one moment the final assertion that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) made about trust, but I thank her for being broadly supportive of the changes that we are discussing; that is welcome.
	The hon. Lady said that she wanted to get rid of the national statistician as chief executive of the statistics board, as well as enhancing the position of the national statistician in a more general way. That is a rather contradictory approach. I assure her about the independence of the statistics board in its assessment functions. She asked how it could really be independent as the board responsible for assessment and production of statistics. With the strengthening changes that we set out in the Lords, and in the general structure of the Bill, the Government have included mechanisms that clearly separate production and assessment.
	There will be a head of assessment who will be appointed by the non-executive board members. Under clauses 5 and 29, he or she will be the board's principal adviser on assessment issues. The head of assessment will lead the staff working on assessment issues, who cannot work on statistical production and, under clause 30, will report separately via the head of assessment directly to the board. Decisions on whether to approve something as a national statistic cannot be delegated from the board; it must take those decisions itself. Under clause 30, the national statistician cannot therefore take part in decisions about the award of a national statistics designation for any statistics produced by his or her office. It will be in the board's interests to ensure that the quality of all statistics is high; that is part of its objective. It will clearly apply the same standards in conducting the assessment of ONS statistics as it will for any other body. I hope that the hon. Lady will rest assured that the separations of powers within the structure are robust and are highlighted throughout the Bill.
	As for whether the national statistician is somehow having her role downgraded, as the hon. Lady knows the new post of national statistician will be a Crown appointment, as set out in clause 5. Clause 28 gives the national statistician the power and prestige that they will need to do the job. The board has to take account of the advice of the national statistician on all statistical matters. If, under clause 27, it overrules the national statistician on a professional technical decision, it must publish a statement, including the reasons why, and lay it before Parliament. The national statistician is a full member of the board, sharing responsibility with other board members for ultimate decision making, rather than advising Ministers, who are currently the ultimate decision makers. That considerably enhances, rather than diminishes, the role of the national statistician. I hope that the hon. Lady will rest assured that, far from the national statistician having a reduced role under the Bill, it gives her a considerably enhanced role. I hope that the House will accept the Lords amendments.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 33 to 39 agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 40 to 64 disagreed to.
	 Lords amendment: No. 65.

Angela Eagle: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 71 and 73.
	This group of amendments responds positively once more to a recommendation from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in the other place. This is a technical issue that I hope need not detain us for too long. The recommendation relates to the delegation of a function of a Minister of the Crown, a Welsh Minister or a Northern Ireland Department under clause 22. The recommendation made by the Committee was that where a Minister of the Crown, a Welsh Minister or Northern Ireland Department delegates a function to the board by order, that order should be subject to the negative resolution procedure if it amends primary legislation. This group of amendments carries out that recommendation, which is tidier in terms of House procedure. I should note that the amendments do not apply to Scottish Ministers because, as agreed with the Scottish Executive, Scottish Ministers are not able to delegate functions to the board. I commend the amendments to the House.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendment No. 66 agreed to.
	 Lords amendments (a) to (qqq) agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 67 to 70 disagreed to.
	 Lords amendment No. 71 agreed to.
	 Lords amendment No. 72 disagreed to.
	 Lords amendment No. 73 agreed to.
	Committee appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to certain of their amendments to the Bill: Dr. Vincent Cable, Angela Eagle, Mr. Michael Foster, Siobhain McDonagh and Mrs. Theresa Villiers; Three to be the quorum of the Committee.— [Mr. Alan Campbell.]
	 To withdraw immediately.
	 Reasons for disagreeing to certain Lords amendments reported, and agreed to; to be communicated to the Lords.

Police

Paul Goggins: I beg to move,
	That the draft Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003 (Commencement No. 2) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 6th June, be approved.
	Hon. Members will recall that, during the passage of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003, the Government made a commitment that, in view of the importance of the issue, the commencement order would be given full consideration by both Houses at the appropriate time.
	The context for tonight's debate is, of course, very different from that at the time of the original legislation. Following the historic commitment to policing and the rule of law that Sinn Fein made earlier this year, there is now a firm foundation for stable devolved government, and a new era for politics in Northern Ireland.
	I am confident that the Assembly will sustain the commitment that it has already shown and continue to move Northern Ireland forward towards a shared future. Of course, there are many challenges ahead—not least the need to reach a decision on the devolution of policing and justice. I am pleased that the Assembly has already established a Committee to consider that and that it is due to produce a report by 27 March 2008. Work is now under way in the Northern Ireland Office to ensure that the policing and justice functions can be devolved by May 2008, should the Assembly request it.
	The progress on support for policing has been remarkable. With Sinn Fein members having taken their place on the Northern Ireland Policing Board, the prospect of inclusive policing—supported by the entire community—is at last a reality. A key element in the structure of accountability built around policing is the network of district policing partnerships, which are now in place throughout Northern Ireland. Since they were established, DPPs have played a unique role in helping to build a safer Northern Ireland by empowering local communities to play their part in shaping local policing.
	District policing partnerships have faced many challenges and I am sure that the House will join me this evening in paying tribute to the work of DPP members—and the courage that many of them have shown in the face of threats and intimidation. District policing partnerships have made a positive impact and will continue to do so, and the policing oversight commissioner shares that view. However, we now need to build on that success—that is why we have decided to introduce the commencement order.
	Patten recommended that both independent and elected members of the Policing Board and DPPs should play their full part in making the police accountable. The provisions that we are now considering had their origins in the revised implementation plan of 2001, in which the Government undertook to consider, in the context of a review of policing arrangements, whether the existing provisions in the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 remained appropriate. That review, which was published on 25 November 2002 in the form of a draft Bill, set out how the Government intended to legislate on DPP disqualification and the powers of the Belfast DPP sub-groups. Draft clauses were subsequently introduced on Report of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003. As I have already said, the Government made it clear that the commencement of those provisions would happen by means of an order, which would be subject to affirmative resolution in both Houses.
	The Government believe that the time is right to commence those provisions as well as the related DPP provisions in the Northern Ireland (St. Andrews Agreement) Act 2006. We intend that all those interrelated provisions should come into force on 4 September.
	The order deals with three specific issues: the requirement for independent members of DPPs to make a declaration against terrorism; the rules concerning disqualification; and the functions of the Belfast DPP sub-groups. The order inserts a range of provisions into the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, and, by its nature, is complex. I therefore hope that hon. Members will bear with me as I go through the detail.
	Article 2 brings into force section 15(1) to (5), section 16(1), section 19(1) and schedule 1 of the 2003 Act. Section 15 brings the arrangements for independent members into line with those that already apply to political members in requiring them to make a declaration against terrorism before the Policing Board can consider their application. It is in the same terms as the declaration that prospective local councillors are already required to make. If an independent member appears to have acted in breach of his or her declaration against terrorism, it will be within the power of the Policing Board, or the council with the approval of the Policing Board, to remove that person from membership of the DPP.
	Section 16 amends the disqualification provision in paragraph 8 of schedule 3 to the 2000 Act. The legislation currently provides that no one who has received a custodial sentence, regardless of how long ago or for what offence, should be allowed to serve as an independent member of a DPP. Section 16 changes that and, instead, provides that a period of five years must elapse following a person's discharge in respect of an offence before he or she may be considered for appointment to a DPP. That change brings the arrangements for independent members into line with those for political members of DPPs, who are drawn from the local council. Similar arrangements apply for appointment to police authorities in England and Wales.
	Section 19 and schedule 1 deal with the arrangements in Belfast for the sub-groups of the DPPs. Section 21 of the 2000 Act requires Belfast city council to establish a sub-group of its DPP for each police district in Belfast. The functions now proposed for the sub-groups mirror those for DPPs, which are contained in section 16 of the 2000 Act. We believe that that should help strengthen the relationship between the local community and the police service of each area in Belfast.

David Lidington: In the light of the Chief Constable's recent reorganisation of police districts, is it now proposed that there should be four or only two sub-groups of the Belfast DPP?

Paul Goggins: Legislation provides for up to four sub-groups. Considerable discussion is going on—and needs to continue—between the Policing Board, Belfast city council and the Chief Constable to determine the correct number of sub-groups to operate in Belfast. The hon. Gentleman is right that the Chief Constable has, operationally, reduced the number of districts to two. There could eventually be two sub-groups or any number up to four, but the number must reflect the policing organisation in the city. However, that is subject to further discussion centrally, in which the Policing Board will play a key role.
	Article 3 provides for the commencement of schedule 9 of the St. Andrews agreement Act, which updates the provisions on the Belfast sub-groups to take account of the changes made to DPP arrangements brought about by the District Policing Partnerships (Northern Ireland) Order 2005. That order provided for the membership of DPPs in the period immediately following a local government election. It also amended the law on the removal of members following conviction for a criminal offence and made a new provision about the chairmen and vice-chairmen of DPPs.
	As I have already said, other DPP provisions in the St. Andrews agreement Act will be commenced at the same time as the provisions we are considering this evening. Although those provisions are not subject to the affirmative resolution process, it is important to refer to them as they will play a key role in enabling the reconstitution of DPPs to take place.
	Schedule 8 to the St. Andrews agreement Act provides for the reconstitution of DPPs before the next local government election. That will enable Sinn Fein members to take their political seats on DPPs and allow the Policing Board to run recruitment exercises for independent members. The legislation requires the Policing Board to review the membership of each DPP—a task that, once begun, must be completed in 15 days. District councils then have three months to appoint new political members to those DPPs affected by the review. In line with the consideration and, hopefully, approval of the order that we are considering, the Government intend to commence schedule 8 to the St. Andrews agreement Act so that it, too, comes into force on 4 September, thus providing the optimum time frame for the reconstitution of DPPs.
	The provisions that the order brings into force will apply each time the membership of DPPs changes after a local government election from 4 September 2007 onwards. They will also apply to the one-off reconstitution of DPPs under schedule 8 to the St. Andrews agreement Act.
	I am very aware that the order will have a direct impact on DPPs, especially their members. Again, I pay tribute to the role of DPPs and the considerable commitment and courage of their members. However, the commitment of all parties and all communities to supporting policing and the rule of law provides an opportunity to ensure that DPPs fully reflect the communities that they serve. It is an opportunity that we should not miss. That is why the Government believe that the time is now right to commence the order, and I commend it to the House.

David Lidington: First, I congratulate the Minister on his elevation during recent Government changes and I welcome the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to his place for the first time.
	In the past three weeks, I have been able to visit five of the eight new Police Service of Northern Ireland district commanders and I have to say that the message from all five was very similar: policing in Northern Ireland is, as the Minister stated, moving into a new phase. They all said that since the Sinn Fein ard fheis of the end of January they had seen signs of greater engagement by republicans in policing, that there had been contact to a lesser or greater extent between Sinn Fein representatives and the local police and, most encouragingly, that they were gradually extending the reach of single officer patrols as well as foot and bicycle patrols in parts of Northern Ireland where those practices have not been possible for far too long.
	It is only fair to add that those commanders also said that progress had been slower than in January they had hoped it would be and that the local republican leadership had shown itself more willing to engage with the local police service in some parts of Northern Ireland than in other parts. There remains quite a way to go before policing in Northern Ireland resembles "normal" policing in the sense that the Minister or I would recognise in our respective constituencies.
	It was put to me that it was important to reconstitute the district policing partnerships as soon as possible because that would provide an institutional framework to encourage the participation of republicans in supporting policing and also make possible a greater understanding by the republican movement of the way in which police officers are constrained by the law and by the myriad systems of accountability that apply in Northern Ireland. Overcoming that genuine ignorance of policing in a democratic society on the part of the republican movement has to be a high priority.
	I have a number of questions and reservations about the legislation, but I want to say in advance that both the Police Federation for Northern Ireland and the Superintendents Association of Northern Ireland have said that they would not wish any problems associated with the order to be pressed to outright opposition in the Division Lobby.
	Let me deal first with the criteria for disqualification. As the Minister said, the order will bring the arrangements in Northern Ireland into line with those that currently apply in respect of police authorities in England and Wales. Surely the Minister would acknowledge that the situation in Northern Ireland—largely on account of the Province's history—is very different. It is quite right that the parent legislation makes it clear that a police officer cannot serve as an independent member of a district policing partnership, but it would be possible, at least in theory, for someone who has been convicted of a very serious terrorist offence in the past or for someone who did not have such a conviction but who intelligence evidence suggested might have been a member of a proscribed terrorist organisation to serve as a member of a DPP. It would thus be possible in law for someone believed by the police or intelligence services to be a member of the Provisional IRA or one of the other paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland to be eligible for nomination as an independent member of a DPP. It is right that we should at least hesitate and pose some questions to the Minister about whether the safeguards are adequate to prevent something like that from happening.
	Clearly, we have to look at the legislation alongside the draft code of practice recently published by the Northern Ireland Office into the way in which independent members of the DPPs and sub-groups are to be appointed. The particular question that I would put to the Minister is whether, at the point in the process where the Policing Board comes to consider the nominations put forward by local councils, it will have access not just to records of criminal convictions, but to intelligence information about ongoing paramilitary involvement or connections of those who have been nominated. If not, I believe that it should have such access.
	When it comes to the judgment by the Policing Board about the overall balance of the DPP in each area, how important does the Minister believe it is for political balance above all to be attained? Clearly, under the legislation and the code of practice, the Policing Board has a responsibility to seek to balance membership of the DPP not just on political grounds, but on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, religious faith and so forth. I have no quarrel with that as a principle, but in the context of Northern Ireland it is crucial that the overall political balance between the two traditions should be viewed as of overriding importance in the make-up of the DPP within each local authority area.
	I was grateful for the Minister's somewhat opaque response to my intervention on the question of sub-groups. I understand that the matter might well be the subject of continuing discussion by all parties. It would seem somewhat peculiar for the Chief Constable to have reduced the number of police districts in Belfast to only two, but for there to be four DPP sub-groups.
	I have a question for the Minister that relates to political balance. He will correct me if I have misread the order or the code of practice, but my understanding is that the duty of Belfast city council when making the nominations and of the Policing Board when it selects those who should serve on a sub-group will be to ensure that a political balance is maintained that is broadly reflective of the politics of the city as a whole. What is not so obvious is a corresponding duty in respect of the membership of each sub-group to reflect the political balance in each of the districts that the sub-group represents.
	Let us consider a map of Belfast. It would clearly not make for good community relations in already difficult circumstances if, for the sake of argument, we were to end up with no Unionists from the west of the city, or with no nationalists or republicans from the east. I hope that the Minister will be able to point me towards an element of the code of practice or the legislation that I have overlooked, which would provide such a safeguard, or perhaps use words that the board of the city council might draw on when it comes to interpret its duties under the legislation.
	Why are we talking about sub-groups only in relation to the city of Belfast? When the parent legislation was drafted and enacted, we were living in a world in which Northern Ireland had 26 police districts rather than eight. It now has much bigger and more diverse police districts. While I can see the advantage of a single DPP committee covering the whole area, I also fear that we might put at risk the sense of the people in the enlarged police district that they have any say in how policing is carried out. We are talking about rural and urban areas being put together in the same police district. Can we, for example, be certain that a district that is centred on the city of Derry will have space on the DPP for men and women who represent the rural communities in that district?
	I want simply to express the hope that the Government will keep this legislation under review, and that they will consider whether the pattern of a single DPP for each enlarged police district is working out in practice as they hoped and intended. I hope that they will also keep an open mind on the possibility of introducing other arrangements to ensure that there is genuine community involvement in, and support for, policing. Bringing about that support and involvement and creating an understanding that the police are accountable to all people in Northern Ireland on an equal basis are fundamental to creating the shared society that the Government and the Conservatives wish to see.

Eddie McGrady: I endorse the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) in congratulating the Minister on his elevation within the jurisdiction and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Woodward), on his new post of Secretary of State. I think that we have got the measure of both of them already, and I hope that we will be able to work very closely with them. However, they occasionally spring surprises, even on those of us who have had many surprises over the years.
	The police reform and reconstruction in Northern Ireland has been one of the great success stories for the people of Northern Ireland and, indeed, for the two Governments. One must remember that the Patten initiative and the Patten recommendations were bitterly opposed by the Democratic Unionist party and, initially, by Sinn Fein. How comforting it is for a member of my party to see both now ardently embracing the new policing structures and promising to do better than we ever did. If I were to put it colloquially, I would say more power to their elbow. It was also gratifying recently to note that the oversight commissioner, who is assiduous in examining the process, was complimentary about the fact that more than 86 per cent. of the Patten recommendations had been achieved in a five-year period, which is only half the 10-year span originally allotted.

Lembit �pik: In crediting the other parties, would the humble hon. Gentleman nevertheless accept credit on behalf of the Social Democratic and Labour party, which made some very difficult decisions at the time? It voted in a very courageous fashion and made it possible to put in place the structures that the DUP and Sinn Fein subsequently embraced.

Eddie McGrady: The hon. Gentleman's reference to me as the humble Member precludes my accepting the accolades that he has thrown in my direction, but I will do so on behalf of other peopleperhaps not so much the Policing Board members, who, as elected representatives, took a decision and accepted the risk and the profile that went with it, but, once more, the ordinary DPP members, both elected and independent, who, to be quite blunt about it, suffered greatly at the hands of Sinn Fein in particular. My colleagues in the SDLPboth elected and non-electedhad their homes bombed, got bullets in the post, were physically threatened and sometimes physically assaulted. It is so easily forgotten that they made those sacrifices, and I am very proud to be associated with them. However, progress has been made, things move on, history is rewritten, and revisionism is the order of the day in Northern Ireland in many respects, including the devolution of powers to the new Government.
	A member of the Patten commission said that the Police Service of Northern Ireland has
	more accountability than any police agency that I am aware of
	in the world. Such tremendous accolades from people with worldwide experience of policing give great satisfaction, but much more important is the fact that members of the community, particularly those who found the old regime hostile and in no way representative of their views, have now come, almost with enthusiasm at long last, to embrace policing simply as a profession, with the aspiration, one hopes, of doing good for their own community. That is evolving, and the district policing partnerships are a great example of how that has happened.
	The hon. Member for Aylesbury asked some extremely interesting questions, although I assume some were tongue in check, because he knows, as I do, that a blind eye will be turned to all sorts of things to achieve the ultimate theoretical position on all those boards. To take one exampleI hope that the Minister will reply to this as wellif the reconstruction of the district policing partnerships follows the reconstruction of the Policing Board by the Northern Ireland Office, there will be great disparities in the broad scope of representation. To put it bluntly, moderate nationalist opinion, which fought in the heat of the day and worked in the heat of the afternoon, has been virtually obliterated from the Northern Ireland Policing Board. I would like to think that the same philosophyit is a mystery to me why it was usedwill not be visited on the new district policing partnerships through the new board in this new composition.
	The order is fairly straightforward and simple. It relates to section 15 of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003, on the declaration against terrorism. I hope that the interpretation of terrorism will be expanded to cover involvement in any quasi-political activity such as intimidation, extortion and blackmail. Elected Sinn Fein councillors who signed up to this process many years ago were still engaged in such activities in their own communities; for all I know, some of them might still be. I would like officials, including representatives of the board and the NIO, to keep a close eye on what is happening in respect of the undertaking to oppose terrorism and all aspects of what the paramilitary machines have been engaged in over the past 10 years since the so-called ceasefireat least by republican Sinn Fein.
	I make that final point as there has been no ceasefire by the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association. Paradoxically, the chairperson of the political wing of the UVF, the Progressive Unionist party, was appointed to be a member of the Policing Board some time ago despite the fact that the organisation her party represents is not on ceasefire and will not commit to any form of decommissioning. The NIO should attempt to explain that paradox.
	Mention has been made of section 16 and the issue of convictions after five years. I will not rehearse the questions posed by the hon. Member for Aylesbury, but let me venture a layman's point of view. How can a policing board, a council or any other body making selections take cognisance of something in someone's history or current circumstances that has not gone through the process of a court of law? I cannot see how that could happen, because if it were to do so, it would immediately raise the possibility of there being allegations of slander and libel in respect of unproven facts. However, if there are ways of addressing this matter, they should be used.
	Section 19 addresses Belfast sub-groups. I have some misgivingsfears is too strong a wordas to what might be the ultimate effect. A possible disastrous outcome is the ghettoisation of the democratic interface with the police in Belfast city. It will clearly be difficult to have the kind of representation that we desire in certain areas of west, east, north and south Belfast. It might have been better to have been more cautious and to have kept things as they were in respect of Belfast DPPs and how sub-groups might contribute. The Police Service of Northern Ireland reconstruction of its command structure has brought together several district councils. However, its undertaking to maintain the original 26 or so DPPs retains local contact, local democracy, local accountability and, most important, local knowledge and interface. That might be the best way to move forward.
	I wish to ask a question that has frequently been posed by me and other members of my party. Why have the Government and the NIO turned their face so strongly against the obvious case for rationalisation in respect of DPPs and community safety partnerships? They overlap in some of their functions. They are supported and part-personneled by district councils and they have duplication in officers and secretariats. I cannot see any rational argument why the functions of the DPPs should not be combined with those of the community safety partnerships so that they form one body.
	There is an historical aspect to this issue, which the NIO has never admitted. When Sinn Fein could muscle in big time on community safety locallyit could never be seen to participate in community policingthat was the origin, I think, of the split thinking in the NIO. Presumably, all that has gone now that Sinn Fein in particular has embraced so fully the PSNI and that its members right down the line are going to participate in the district policing partnerships. However, one query remains. Just this week in my Down district local paper, I read that Sinn Fein councillors cannot yet participate in district policing partnershipsor, indeed, in district safeguard committeesbecause of police attendance. That raises the question of just how deep the conviction is to sustain independent, impartial and accountable policing. However, I will leave that question hanging.
	As I said, I would like to know why district policing partnerships are being kept divorced from community safety partnerships, given that they perform a like service from a like source. When schedule 8 to the Northern Ireland (St. Andrews Agreement) Act 2006 comes into play, perhaps it will round off the advances in policing. I would like to think that the double-speak that has taken place in our communities on policing for so long is over at long last, and that all the communities will trulytrulygive service and allegiance to policing, while at the same time holding the police forcefully and totally to account for their actions.
	The attitude towards, and the support of moderate opinionparticularly moderate nationalist opinionfor the process of justice and, thereby, of policing has taken a severe dent lately. The Public Prosecution Service failed to take any court actionor any action at allagainst those who were involved in the murder of Pat Finucane. According to the Stevens report and other police inquiries, there was prima facie evidence that those people were involved in his murder, and that the state played a complicit role. The NIO and the PSNI do not recognise how damaging that decision was to the community.

Lembit �pik: I begin by welcoming the Minister of State to his new, exalted position, and by welcoming even more so the Secretary of State to his new role. However, and without meaning to seem disrespectful, I do find it curious that the job was not first offered to me. I have been in this position for 10 years now, but I bear the Minister no grudge. In the spirit of the tripartite consensus that has led us to this relatively happy time in Northern Ireland politics, I offer him the benefit of my experience in my own quiet way, as I have done to his five predecessors since 1997. He takes on the role at a tremendously exciting time. Northern Ireland politics is changingfrom being the debate of sectarian divides to being a debate about economics, health and all the things that rightly occupy politicians in peacetime. I hope that he will enjoy his role and contribute proactively to the normalisation of attitudes in politics in the Province in the years ahead.
	It is an indication of the level of progress that this measure, which appeared so controversial when we debated it in Standing Committee, Northern Ireland Grand Committee and on the Floor of the House, does not even prompt the presence of some of those who objected so fiercely to it. That is not a criticism of those absent today, but a compliment to the dtente that appears to exist between former foes. The attitudinal shifts that have taken place, momentous as they are, make it possible for this measure to pass without controversy into law this evening.
	The DPPs of course embody a democratic accountability that is vital if the police service is to win the trust of all elements of the Northern Ireland community. In essence, the measures that we are discussing today will ensure an engagement between the public, the politicians and those who seek to maintain law and order in a codified and structured way. I am optimistic that that will be the case.
	My optimism is founded on two points. The first is the evident support from the DUP for these measures, and the second is the evidence of the practical commitment by Sinn Fein to rein in the volatile and criminal elements with which it has been formerly associated. I am sure that the promises made at the ard fheis will be kept. I have sometimes been in a minority when I have said that Sinn Fein's word is usually its bond, but that is why I am confident that the measures, once passed, will be embraced by the republican community as well as by the loyalist community in Northern Ireland, together with their political representatives.
	It is appropriate for us also to give credit to the progressives who supported these measures at a time when to do so was not easy, but hard. I have already paid tribute to the SDLP in that regard, but we should also recognise the progressives in the Ulster Unionist party and in the finest party of them all, the Alliance party of Northern Ireland, which persevered unfailingly in an attempt to reach some kind of consensus at times when that seemed far away.
	We have already heard from the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) that it was not only political pressure, but criminal pressurecoercionthat was being used to try to thwart the very measures that we are passing now. Those who were responsible for that, and who have had a Damascene conversion to support for these measures, need to recognise that they would not exist if others, perhaps more courageous, had not taken the lonely decision to support the measures at a time when that was used against them politically.
	As for the consequences of the order, the main question is whether the safeguards are adequate to prevent criminality and corruption from seeping into appointments to the district policing partnerships, a point that the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) elucidated in some detail. I see it like this: in theory, it is a risk, but in practice, it is not a very big one. There will be an onus on those choosing whom they want as members of the DPPs to exercise a degree of common sense. I accept, as my late father used to say, that sense is not always common, but there are elements in the decision-making process for appointing members of the DPPs that cannot be guaranteed through further legislation. There would be a bigger danger in over-legislating, rather than allowing a degree of autonomy and accepting that with that comes a degree of risk.
	By the same token, the sub-groups are likely to provide a political balance, because that is the mood music of the cross-party and cross-community consensus in Northern Ireland politics at the moment. I am prepared to give the benefit of the doubt because sometimes we see more problems than we need to try to solve. If that does not work out, it will need attention, but we do not need to worry about that just now.
	We have discussed the specific content of the measures at some length in the past and other hon. Members have already considered specific elements of sections 15, 16, 19 and so on. The House will remember that the Liberal Democrats were supportive of the measures and the 2003 Act, when it passed through Parliament. We did not raise any major concerns in relation to schedule 9 to the St. Andrew's agreement Act of 2006. Indeed, we supported the provisions when they were introduced in 2003 and 2006 specifically because we believed that if those measures could be implemented in a way that we could be confident would be genuinely embraced by those who have to carry them out, we would be in a much better place in Northern Ireland than we were at the time that the legislation was formed. That is where we are today. The passing of this order is an important milestone in consolidating the political stability that has to underlie any accountability structures for the PSNI.
	This is a big day and a big change, and it is a long time coming, yet it must also indicate that permanent changes are being made. I am delighted to see it, because the normalisation of the Police Service of Northern Ireland involves some kind of closure. The initiatives that have been put forward indicate that some of the intractables that we have faced as obstacles in the past have been addressed. The message is a good oneat last, it is time for all of us to move on.

Patrick Cormack: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik), who, as he reminded us, brings an element of continuity to these Northern Ireland debates. As heir to Gladstone, whose mission was to pacify Ireland, perhaps he should be referred to as the grand old man of Northern Ireland politics. However, I prefer to call him the cheeky boy of Northern Ireland politics.
	I add my congratulations to the Minister of State on his well-deserved promotion. I also welcome the Secretary of State and hope that he is able to build on the real achievements of his predecessor, whom we shall miss in Northern Ireland politics.
	I should also like to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) has been an exemplary spokesman on this subject. Rumour has it that he is moving to other pastures; if so, I hope he will always look back on the years when he had responsibility for Northern Ireland affairs for the Opposition with a degree of quiet satisfaction and pride. He has made a positive contribution. He has never scored cheap party points in debate. He has given support to the Government, who have deserved support, but he has never held back from constructive criticism when it was necessary. I for one will miss him in that role, and wish him every possible success in his new one.
	A few months ago, we would probably not have thought that this measure would come before us so early. A dramatic development has taken place in Northern Ireland over the past few months, for which the Government deserve credit, as do all those who have played a part, particularly the politicians from Northern Ireland. The self-effacing attitude of the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) has been a contributory factor in building stability in Northern Ireland. I hope that he will have many more years of involvement in Northern Ireland politics because his sagacity and experience will be needed for a long time to come.
	We are making a gesture of faith in approving the order tonight. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury will not be pressing for a Division, and it is clear that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire will not do so; they are both right. It is, however, a gesture of faith, although not entirely a leap in the dark. It is crucial that those responsible for such matters keep the policing system and the DPPs under constant monitoring and review, as my hon. Friend said.
	Although great progress has been made, exactly a year ago the Northern Ireland Committee produced a report on organised crime in Northern Ireland that showed a disturbing amount of paramilitary activity and crime. We took evidencemuch of which we had to take in privatethat was deeply disturbing. Earlier this year, we produced a report on community restorative justice schemes. While we said unequivocally that they have a real part to play in Northern Ireland, we also pointed to some of the worries and problems, and the danger of people infiltrating the systems. The hon. Member for South Down has been particularly eloquent on that subject, and rightly so. District policing partnerships are not immune to manipulation by those with evil intent. If we are truly to move to proper normality in Northern Ireland, we must have a policing service that is held in high regard and upheld by all sections of the community. I am cautiously optimistic. I believe that it will be, but we are not there yet.
	The creation of the PSNI, which was not without controversy, as the hon. Member for South Down reminded us earlier, was itself a gesture of faith. It has worked, as much as anything else because of the outstanding leadership of Sir Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable, who has performed as great a service to the people of Northern Ireland as any other individual over the past few years, and it is important that we put that on record. But if Sir Hugh is to be upheldand his successors, because he will not be there for everwe must do more than just approve the order tonight; we must ensure that it is properly monitored and kept under constant and vigilant review.
	I shall weary the House for one moment more with a little anecdote. I gave lunch today to the Bosnian ambassador. I happen to be chairman of the all-party Bosnia group, and I was one of the few who spoke out about Bosnia when the Government and the Opposition of the day were not speaking out as they should have done. I talked to the Bosnian ambassador about the developments, changes and progress, and about her travels in the United Kingdom. She has recently been to Northern Ireland, and she said how utterly taken aback and bewildered she was to see the so-called peace walls. She said, There is nothing like that in my country. That brought me up sharp and made me realise that, although we are understandably in a bit of a mood of euphoria at the moment, following the events of 8 May, and subsequent developmentswe are all delighted about thatthere is still quite a long way to go before we have a truly normal society in Northern Ireland. I am glad that the hon. Member for South Down agrees with me on that. Until those peace walls are dismantled, and until they stop painting the kerbstones red, white and blue, or green and orange, we will always have the seeds of incipient conflict within Northern Ireland.
	The one institution that can help to ensure that we do progress to normality is the PSNI, and it can do that only if it is upheld by politicians of all persuasions and community leaders in all walks of life. The order is a gesture of faith in them. In that context, I approve of it, and I hope that my worries, which are real, will prove groundless.

Paul Goggins: I begin, on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and myself, by thanking all those who contributed to the debate this eveningmy hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) and the hon. Members for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington), for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) and for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack)for their generous remarks to us. We intend to be the dynamic duo, although I hope there will not be too many surprises, as we do not have quite the same opportunities these days to mount surprises, but one never knows.
	If the hon. Member for South Staffordshire is right and the hon. Member for Aylesbury is destined for other thingshe smiles as I say thatI wish him well. Our debates on Northern Ireland will be the poorer without him. The revelation in his remarks that he had personally already seen five of the eight new district commanders in Northern Ireland is testament to the quiet way in which he diligently carries out his job. As much as we will miss him, however, the area of responsibility he moves into will be the beneficiary.
	The hon. Gentleman is right to point to the progress that has been madethe way in which the arrangements for policing and accountability for policing in Northern Ireland are workingbut he is also right to say that more needs to be done. We need to make further progress and the DPPs will be an important element in making sure that policing in Northern Ireland is accountable, and that across the country people are engaged in the development of policing strategies that serve their communities. The legislation we are introducing today will enable DPPs to do that even more effectively.
	When the hon. Gentleman mentioned the criteria for disqualification, he put his finger on a very sore point. It is a difficult area, but all we can do in this place is to bring the rules for independent members of DPPs into line with those for the political members. All members, both independent and political, must make a declaration against terrorism and, as it is short, I shall read it out. It states:
	I declare that, if appointed, I will not by word or deed express support for or approval of...any organisation that is for the time being a proscribed organisation specified in Schedule 2 to the Terrorism Act 2000; or acts of terrorism (that is to say, violence for political ends) connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland.
	That is an unequivocal statement by any would-be independent member of a DPP of their complete aversion and opposition to acts of terrorism, so although the hon. Member for Aylesbury has identified a difficult area, I hope that gives him comfort that we are aware of the need to make progress to sustain a more hopeful future.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about criminal checks. It is important to emphasise that that is a matter for the Policing Board, which has central responsibility and has set out the related procedures in its code of practicespecifically in paragraph 96. The board will of course write to the Chief Constable about the criminal record of any independent member whose appointment it is considering. There is a robust system so that the Policing Board, which rightly has responsibility, can check out each and every independent member it may be considering for appointment.
	The hon. Gentleman spoke about political balance, which is a difficult matter for the reasons he gave. Section 14 of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003 requires the Policing Board in appointing independent members of the DPP to ensure that they, together with the political members, are representative of the district that the DPP serves. The detail is set out in the code of practice, which is out for consultation at present.
	I apologise to the hon. Gentleman and to the House for being opaqueas he put itabout the arrangements in Belfast. As he suggested, my opaqueness was deliberate, because in the end the decisions are not for me but for the Policing Board, Belfast city council and the Chief Constable to work out together. The number can be up to four, but they must work out the appropriate arrangements for them, so opaque I shall remain in relation to that matter.
	There are two points relating to political balance that I hope will give the hon. Gentleman some encouragement. First, all the sub-groups must have representatives from the four main political parties; no political party will be shut out of any of the sub-groups. Secondly, the sub-groups feed into the DPP itself, which has an over-arching, overriding role across the whole city of Belfast. It is not the sub-groups that feed into the Policing Board and the council, but the DPP that takes an overview, so there should be balance across the whole city.
	The hon. Gentleman said that Belfast is different, but asked how different and whether there are other areas of Northern Ireland that might need special arrangements. We recognise in the legislation that Belfast needs some special arrangements, and that is what we have put in place. With the review of public administration, the map of local government in Northern Ireland will look different in the future, so all these things need to be kept under review. Happily, it is increasingly the case that the review is being undertaken by those who rightly have the responsibility for local government and ultimately, hopefully in the not too distant future, for policing and justice as welllocal Ministers and locally accountable people.
	I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Down for his remarks and pay tribute, as others have, to the role that he personally played in relation to policing accountability in Northern Ireland. He was a member of the Policing Board when it was very difficult to be a member of the Policing Board. He took risks, along with his colleagues, and I pay tribute to him. On every opportunity that I have to debate policing, I will always make that point, because he stood out when others did not and we are all very grateful to him for doing that. We have reflected together on the consequences, as he puts it, of his bravery and the bravery of his colleagues. As others have come on board, perhaps there is less space for his party in terms of the Policing Board and the DPPs, but if the number of seats on some of the bodies has perhaps reduced, I hope that it is of some comfort to him to know that he has played a key role in moving the whole of Northern Ireland forward to a more peaceful and prosperous future. His role in that should never be forgotten.
	My hon. Friend drew a comparison between the Policing Board and the DPPs, but there is of course one crucial difference. The Policing Board was appointed, as he pointed out, by the Secretary of State, whereas the DPPs are appointed by the Policing Board. The Policing Board has an obligation to make sure that there is proper balance and, as I have said, that is set out in the code of practice.
	My hon. Friend put his finger on an important issue that will be the subject of further deliberation by me, as the Minister with responsibility for security, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and those involved in policing and local authority administration. I am talking about the question of the overlap between community safety partnerships and DPPs. We have to recognise that the two arrangements have different functions. The function of the DPP is to hold the local policing arrangements to account. The community safety partnerships, on the other hand, are about delivery, so there is a difference in the core purpose of each of the bodies. That said, there is clearly an overlap. I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured to know that I have commissioned some work by officials in the Northern Ireland Officeworking with the Policing Board and othersto look at the matter afresh to see whether we can develop a model that will minimise any overlap in the future and will give us the best possible structure.
	We would all acknowledge the longevity of the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire in the role that he plays and we thank him for his questions and scrutiny, as well as his support on a number of key issues. He rightly reflects on how far we have come in such a short space of time and he was right to pay tribute to the various people he mentioned. He was also right to acknowledge that this is another important milestone in the journey towards a more accountable police service and a more peaceful Northern Ireland. We know that the police service in Northern Ireland is now probably the most accountable police service anywhere in the world. That is why increasing confidence can be put behind it.
	The hon. Member for South Staffordshire, as the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, brings considerable knowledge and experience to these debates. I pay tribute to the work of his Committee on the issue of organised crime, the restorative justice schemes and various other areas. I am conscious that he and his Committee are currently taking a long hard look at the Prison Service in Northern Ireland and I look forward to further conversations with him about that.
	This is, as the hon. Gentleman said, a gesture of faith, but it is not a reckless gesture of faith. We have a well-founded belief that the arrangements will work and represent another step forward towards ensuring that we have an accountable police service in Northern Ireland that can underpin the peace and prosperity that we all want. I was pleased that he rightly paid tribute to the important role of the Chief Constable. Sir Hugh Orde is performing that role well.
	The hon. Gentleman was also right to remind us that for all the progress that has been made, difficulties still remain. There is still too much sectarianism in some communities in Northern Ireland. We want the structures of division that are still in place to be removed when it is eventually safe to do so. We must not be complacent. Direct-rule Ministers must continue to work hard with devolved Ministers and all structures of both civil society and government to ensure that we work with communities so that the hope, optimism and opportunity that we face are turned into a reality with a peaceful and prosperous future for Northern Ireland.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That the draft Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003 (Commencement No. 2) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 6th June, be approved.

European Global Navigation Satellite System

[Relevant documents: T he Twenty-third Report of the European Scrutiny Committee, Session 2006-07, HC41 -xxiii and the Twenty-sixth Report of the European Scrutiny Committee, Session 2006-07, HC41 xxvi .]

Rosie Winterton: I beg to move,
	That this House takes note of European Union document number 7828/07 and ADD 1, Commission Communication, GALILEO at a cross-roadthe implementation of the European GNSS programmes; and endorses the Government's approach to discussions on this document.
	The Government welcome the opportunity for a full discussion on the Galileo programme. I thank the European Scrutiny Committee, and especially my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), for its work on scrutinising the project. There is no doubt that the programme is at a turning point. Negotiations with the merged consortium bidding for a public-private partnership concession have been ended. In October, the Transport Council and ECOFIN are likely to be asked to make a decision on the future direction of the programme. The Government intend that that decision should be based on a full assessment of all relevant factors, including the identification of the available options, their costs and risks, and the programme's affordability.

Alistair Carmichael: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way at such an early stage in her speech. Like her, I think that the debate is important. However, the full detail of the Commission's position will probably not become apparent until September and the Council will take place in October. What opportunity will the House have to consider and debate the Commission's full position before the Council?

Rosie Winterton: Obviously, there are opportunities for debate in the House. We are more than happy to keep hon. Members informed of the points that the Government are making to the Commission about the UK's position. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) has always been open and clear about the Government's position, and the European Scrutiny Committee's work is continuing.
	Galileo is considered to be a key Community project. There is a strong will in many member states and Community institutions to make it happen. We share the belief that Galileo could offer real benefits, not least by giving the UK and European industries the opportunity to develop new commercial applications.

Angus Robertson: I am grateful for being allowed to intervene at this early stage. Just to follow on from the point made by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael), is it not the case that the Commission's financial plans must return to the European Parliament as part of a process of co-decision? In conjunction with the scrutiny that the European Scrutiny Committee might offer, is that not a further safeguard to keep tabs on the project's finances?

Rosie Winterton: The hon. Gentleman is certainly correct to say that the European Parliament has taken a great interest in the project and keeps itself informed of the position. As I say, Finance Ministers also take an interest in the project.

Keith Vaz: I thank my right hon. Friend for coming to the House to make a full statement, and for ensuring debate on the issue. How much money have the Government put into the Galileo project?

Rosie Winterton: The finances to date come under the financial perspectives headings, in which the figures are not individually set out, but I assure my right hon. Friend that we are keeping a close eye on the future financial perspectives that have been put in place. As regards increased expenditure, we have made it clear that the UK has a strong position on making sure that the project is value for money.

Tobias Ellwood: Will the Minister give way?

Rosie Winterton: I will, but then I must make a little progress.

Tobias Ellwood: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; she has been very generous so far, but she may not appreciate my question. I cannot believe that she can come to a debate of such importance without knowing how much has been spent on the project. That is almost a scandal. We must understand where the money has come from and how much will be spent in the long term. However, the biggest question that the House must answer is why on earth we are devoting so much money to the project, when there already exists a very decent system run by the Americans. Why are we going ahead with it when something that is free already exists?

Rosie Winterton: I hope that as we work through the debate, the hon. Gentleman will be able to put aside some of his clear prejudice and consider the benefits. I completely understand where he is coming from, but we need to consider the wider issues, and the ways in which it can benefit British and European industry if we make sure that we have a strategic system in place. Perhaps he should think about the points made about the possible benefits. There is also strong reassurance in the fact that the Government are keen to make sure that the project is value for money, particularly considering the problems that there have been so far, which I will address. As regards the commitment so far, we are talking about approximately 142 million. However, I will set out where will go from here.

Lembit �pik: rose

Rosie Winterton: I will give way, but then I must make progress.

Lembit �pik: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. On that very point, may I give her one example of an important benefit? The aviation business increasingly depends on global positioning system technology, but there is no redundancy. We have no alternative method of positioning, using satellites, so if the system goes downand it canit will create a grave danger to aviation. Leaving aside the issue of costs, which is obviously important, does she agree that the principle of ensuring redundancy in such an essential navigation system must surely be right?

Rosie Winterton: As I have said, Galileo is considered a key Community project, but we are clear that it cannot be carried out at any price; it has to be affordable, and it has to be value for money. It needs better governance and risk management, open competition and a firm focus on the opportunities for getting the private sector to share the costs and risks. We must also look out for opportunities for generating revenue.
	From the very beginning of the project, our aim has been constructive: we want to work with our partners and the European Commission to ensure that Galileo can achieve its potential. The Government's priority objectives are private sector involvement through a robust public-private partnership, a civil programme under civil control, and a transparent process of development and financial control to deliver value for money. We are set to achieve that. Our commitment to those objectives is therefore unchanged. In particular, our position on a PPP solution has been consistent and pragmatic. The advantages of bringing in private finance in major projects, in terms of better project management, cost control and risk management, are well known. They have been recognised in EU decisions on the trans-European networks programme, and in the fourth Space Council resolution as recently as May this year. With the ending of the negotiations, the June Council resolutionthat more evidence was needed before a decision on the way forwardwas the right outcome.
	Before I go further, I would like to pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet, who argued strongly for these outcomes. It was he who secured the presidency's agreement that we should not proceed with Galileo unless the costs were justifiable, and also an acknowledgement that the Council should not rule out the involvement of private finance.

Bernard Jenkin: Between 1998 and 2001 I served as shadow Transport Secretary and debated this subject in European Standing Committee B. I asked then what the commercial applications for the project are. I got no answer. Nearly 10 years later, can the Minister give me an answer now?

Rosie Winterton: The project has commercial applications in the same way as GPS has commercial applications. It is important to recognise that those are increasing. As someone who has a GPS navigation system in her car, I think we would be facing in the wrong direction if we did not recognise that there are advantages in some of those new technological developments. We have to consider carefully how we apply them in the commercial sector. That was one of the points that my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet raisedthat we need the Commission to look closely at what the commercial interest in the system would be.

David Taylor: Does my right hon. Friend rejoice, as I do, that the European Transport Council pressed the European Commission to abandon the potential public-private partnership? Does she recognise the figure of the senior account manager at Surrey Satellite Technology, who predicted that over a 20-year period the running costs of the system will be around 10 billion? What proportion of that cost will fall on the United Kingdom?

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend is right to say that we must consider these matters carefully. That is why it was important at the June Council to get agreement to ensure that the Commission is examining all these issues carefully. The Government are making sure that they are closely involved in asking questions about the future costs, including on-going development costs.

Michael Connarty: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is much more important that the investment, which was 10 billion, if it is successful, would, according to the analysis coming before our Committee from the Commission, allow such a system to participate in a market of 450 billion, which it has estimated will be available for satellite navigation systems up to 2025? For a 10 billion investment, a 450 billion market is worth investing in.

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend is right. I am the first to recognise that at this stage he knows a lot more than I do about all the details of the project. I know that he has looked closely at all those costings.

John Spellar: I thank the Minister for giving way and welcome her to her new position. The fundamental problem is not the PPP, but the funding stream. The commercial applications do not really matter; the question is whether anyone is actually prepared to pay. During my period and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), the Commission evaded the crucial issue of who will pay. Why would people pay for a serviceGPSthat they can get for free? Unless we resolve that question, all the other problems will keep coming back.

Rosie Winterton: My right hon. Friend is right to say that we should examine cost implications, funding streams and income. As I have said, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet made those points very strongly at the June Council. Those points accord with the European Scrutiny Committee's assessment of the communication from the Commission that was before the Council. Like the Transport Committee in 2004, the ESC questioned the Commission's evidence, recommending that it should produce a fully substantiated case for continuing with Galileo, whether by public procurement or PPP, including governance, finances, the total cost, the level of risk, the sources of private sector revenue and the sources of funding from the Community budget. In our minutes statement at the June Council, which was produced jointly with the Netherlands, we asked for exactly thata cost-benefit comparison on the same basis between a PPP and a public procurement of the system, followed by an operating concession. Our aim now is to work with the Commission and our partners to build a wider consensus on the detailed issues that must be clarified before October.
	It may help the House if I mention some of the issues now. First, on cost and timelines, the evidence of the programme to datethe publicly funded development phase of Galileo and EGNOS, the European geostationary navigation overlay service augmentation systemshows significant cost and timetable overruns. We will continue to argue for sound cost estimates and prudent project timelines that take account of the risks inherent in any project of this size and complexity.
	Secondly, on affordability, the Commission's communication accepted that more money will be needed than has been earmarked in the budget. Much of that amount, 1.1 billion, could be swallowed up in cost overruns for the development phase and EGNOS. In line with sound financial management, the UK will resist any reopening of the European budget headings. We will also argue for consideration of whether the system might be phased or re-scoped to what is affordable. Next week, the Government will continue to push for clarity on the financing at the ECOFIN council. We will reaffirm our commitment to funding the programme within the existing ceilings of the 2007 to 2013 financial perspective, and we will put that message across very firmly on finance as well as transport networks.
	Thirdly, the communication did not include a substantive consideration of risk. However, the design and market risks identified during the PPP negotiations, some of which are substantial, will not change and could increase. Pressure to build the system quickly could be a factor in increasing the risks. We will therefore push for an assessment of all the risks that the project may face.
	Fourthly, lack of effective competition was one of the major problems that affected the concession negotiations. We welcome the emphasis on competition in the Council resolution and will continue to argue strongly for open procurement.
	Fifthly, public sector governance needs to be improved. There must be transparency for EU member states and compliance with EU principles. In the continuing debate, the UK will also maintain the position agreed by the Council, the Commission and the European Parliamentthat Galileo is a civil programme under civil control. Our firm commitment is that Galileo cannot be used for dedicated military purposes. It is a civil programme under civil control. The December 2004 Transport Council conclusions made it clear that changing the civil status of Galileo would require a decision under the terms of the common foreign and security policy. That decision making is by unanimity and remains so.

Bernard Jenkin: The right hon. Lady says that the Government are giving the assurance that this will not be for dedicated military use. Why does she put the word dedicated in front of military use? Why does not she just say that it will not be used for military purposes, end of storyor is this meant to be a covertly joint defence programme?

Rosie Winterton: Of course some military forces might use Galileo for purposes such as transport logistics; that is why I put it like that. Among our European partners, some organisations such as the coastguard and border police, for whom Galileo may be useful, are technically under military control. However, we should not look to such organisations or to any other Government users to provide the bulk of Galileo revenues.
	The Government are equally firmly opposed to any suggestion that the Commission should mandate the use of Galileo charged services in EU regulation. If Galileo is to be a successful project, we should encourage the private sector to look for commercial, not governmental uses. Governments will certainly also then use the services if they are cost-effective.

Humfrey Malins: The Minister will know that the European Scrutiny Committee referred to the need to identify the sources of private sector revenue. Can she do so?

Rosie Winterton: That is exactly the question that we have given back to the Commission. As the hon. Gentleman will know, in the first consortium that was put together there were sources of private sector revenue. We want to ensure that we are considering all the commercial aspects. It would not be right for me to prejudge that.
	One of the Galileo successes so far is the test satellite built in Guildford and delivered on time and to budget, which has successfully transmitted all the operational Galileo signals. That is a real success, and it should be one of the lessons learned from the project. It was delivered by a small company, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., a high-tech spin off from Surrey university. If Galileo is to work for the Community, we need more successes like that across Europe. Unfortunately, for a majority of our European partners, the failure of flawed negotiations has tainted the idea of a public-private partnership. In that context, there is a risk that people tend to fall back on what they knowin this case, public procurementas the safe option. By doing so, frankly, they ignore the facts. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet said at the June Council, if the private sector is not willing to face the risks of the project, what makes us think that the public sector can handle them? The riskscutting edge design, uncertainty of revenues, cost and timetable overruns, and the industrial rivalries which have caused significant delaysdo not change.
	The Government are therefore committed to defending the principles which we believe are essential for a successful project. We will continue to argue for a robust approach and to widen the support for that among transport and finance colleagues in Europe. If, nevertheless, the PPP approach is abandoned by consensus, and if the alternative is affordable in the view of the budget authorities, we will continue to work for clarity in governance, open competition and value for money, in line with our commitments to this House. I commend the motion to the House.

Owen Paterson: I congratulate the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton) on her new appointment. As much as I would have looked forward to future exchanges, this is sadly to be but a brief encounter because I, too, am off to pastures new. It is a pleasure to have one chance, but perhaps the Minister will not be thrilled to hear that I believe that she has given a rosy account of proceedings so far.
	Let me set out the background. Satellite navigation could lead to a global market of up to 15 billion by 2010. The United States Navstar global positioning system is easily the largest provider of the navigation signal, which some people still believe to be a military system. It became operational in 1995. In 1996, President Clinton handed control of it to an intra-agency executive. In May 2002, the full signal was made available to users worldwide, and it wasand isfree. In 2004, President Bush replaced the executive board with an executive committee and, from that date, it was no longer used as a military system, but military and civilian authorities manage it equally. Long before all that happened, the European Space Agency and the member states of the European Union became aware of the potential of satellite navigation. They argued that Navstar was not reliable because it was controlled by the military and could be shut down at any time.

William Cash: Does my hon. Friend recall that one of the reasons why we won the Falklands war was that we had access to the American navigation systems in space? That was crucialand there was a huge argument about it in the United Statesbut, as usual and, as in 1939, the Americans came to our aid and we won.

Owen Paterson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour for making that point. He is right to stress the significance of American help and I will tackle that further in my remarks. It is inconceivable that the GPS could be turned off, but I shall say more about that shortly.
	After outline approval at the Nice European Council in December 2000, the ESA, in partnership with the European Commission, made plans to match the US GPS. Crucially, unlike the US system, it was to be completely under civilian control and, also unlike the US system, which enjoyed taxpayer funding, its deployment and operation was to be financed by a public-private partnership, with the private sector bearing two thirds of the costs.
	Unfortunately, although the Galileo project was intended to be Europe's satellite navigation system, it also became, in the manner of so many European projects, a virility symbol, which was intended to demonstrate the success of European economic and political integration. Mrs. Loyola de Palacio, then Vice-president of the Commission with responsibility for transport and energy, declared at the inception of the development stage of Galileo on 26 March 2002:
	Europe has finally taken the political decision to launch this strategic programme. Today we are seeing the creative side of Europe... It will help Europe to maintain its autonomy, its sovereignty, its technological capacity and control of its knowledge.
	Five years later, Galileo is at what the European Commission coyly calls a cross-road. More accurately, it is in crisis, which arises from the complete failure of the plan for financing the scheme and the time scale for deployment. On the basis of a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Commission claimed:
	Considerable economic benefits should be generated by Galileo.
	It also claimed that the project would cost 3.6 billion to complete and that, assuming a worst case scenario, total benefits would be 17.8 billion. On that understanding, in 2002 the then Prime Ministerthe current steward of the Chiltern hundredspersonally approved the scheme at the Barcelona European Council on 13 and 14 March. Two years later, the Commission confidently predicted that Galileo
	will definitely become operational in 2008.
	A mere three years later, the Commission admits to a date of 2012, and some industry sources suggest that it could be 2014. Although 30 satellites are planned, the only tangible achievement is a single test satellite, Giove-A because the second, Giove-B, has been short-circuiting and will possibly not be launched until December.
	As for future costs, an unpublished Commission report now admits that, against the original estimate of 3.4 billion for deployment, plus an additional 5.3 billion for operation and maintenancea maximum of 8.7 billionthe system will now cost 9 billion to 12 billion up to 2030. The best-case scenario for revenue becomes 8 billion to 10 billion, or less if the more accurate US GPS III offers high-level services free of charge. From a projected profit of 17.8 billion, the maximum is now 1 billion, with a possible loss of 4 billion.
	That is why the PPP refused the risk, as was said. With Navstar provided free of charge, one unnamed executive of the failed consortium is quoted in the  Financial Times as saying:
	There is a doubt over the revenues... Why sell Pepsi-Cola when you can get Coca-Cola free?
	The Commission is now asking member states to bail out its pet project by injecting a huge tranche of public money despite a solemn guarantee in November 2001 that
	no more public money would be needed after 2007.
	So desperate is it that the venture should continue that it offers two main options: that the funding should come either through the ESA or, preferably, through the Community budget. Additionally, in its February communication, it also proposed a new stealth taxincredibly, a levy on GPS receivers, most of which are designed to receive a signal provided free of charge by the US.
	In the manner of a child commenting on Lord Randolph Churchill, we must ask what Galileo is for. Ostensibly, it is to provide navigation services, not only for people who live in Europe, but worldwide. As was said, the US Navstar GPS system is currently available free of charge to every user, while coming along is the Russian GLONASS and Chinese Beidou compass system, both of which will also be free of charge.
	Arguing against cancellation, some advocates will say that Galileo offers greater accuracy and a guarantee of a service not offered by other systems. Galileo's high level of accuracy, however, applies only to the subscription services. There will be no significant difference in the publicly accessible signal, which at the moment is deemed perfectly sufficient for any number of commercial or Government systems. Last year, for example, I visited Berlin and saw the Satellic road-pricing scheme in action, which tracks and charges every single truck over 12 tonnes on German autobahns. Only GPS is used. When I asked about Galileo, the answer was quite clear: they said that if it comes along, they might use it, but they are under no pressure, as they have GPS and their system works. That scheme has been a huge success, pulling in about 250 million a month.
	Last week, I had meetings with representatives of Trafficmaster plc, a highly successful company selling navigation services to more than 100,000 vehicles in the UK. Its technical director, Christopher Barnes, said that
	the free to air GPS service is sufficient for vehicle navigation and therefore we are unlikely to be interested in paying (either voluntarily or through a compulsory tax) to use a European service, even if technically it would be better.
	There is extremely limited application for the higher accuracy that Galileo will offer and, in any event, any such advantage will last only until the US deploys Block III Navstar, which promises equivalence.

Bernard Jenkin: Will my hon. Friend deal with the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) that we somehow need to build extra redundancy into global satellite positioning systems, otherwise our civil aviation industry will be severely at risk? Does my hon. Friend agree that every airline pilot in the world has been trained to navigate his or her aircraft without global positioning, making this redundancy completely unnecessary?

Owen Paterson: I agree that airline pilots can navigate, but I would stress the huge importance of maintaining the accuracy of GPS. To provide an example, there was a very slight glitch in one of the GPS satellites a short time ago when one of the timers went wrong. The result was that 10 per cent. of mobile phones on the west coast of the US went down. It is thus enormously important for the United States to keep GPS accurate. The economic consequences are huge, as I shall explain in more detail later.

Lembit �pik: By way of illustration to the hon. Gentleman, does he recognise that many of the smaller aerodromes do not have navigation aids to enable a precision approach, so the only way to achieve that on those smaller fields is by using GPS? My point was that in those circumstances, without redundancyand especially in bad weatherthere is a serious risk to the pilot of an accident.

Owen Paterson: The answer to that question posed by my parliamentary neighbour from Montgomeryshire is that we have GPS now and it will be enhanced by Block III. The answer is to use the European geostationary navigation overlay service and to get them integrated.
	Fears about continuity of service are totally bogus. The President of the US said in December 2004 that providing uninterrupted access to the system and the provision of services on a continuous, worldwide basis for civil use, free of direct user fees for civil, commercial, and scientific uses was their clear policy. The US is also committed to providing GPS to NATOa point on which my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) touchedwhere it is used not only for navigation but for command and control systems, weapons delivery and, crucially, for the prevention of friendly fire. That is the so-called blue-force tracker system.
	So central are satellite navigation systems to the military that, during the height of the Iraq war in 2004, the United States did not close down the system in the region even after it found out that Iraqi forces were using it against the US. Additionally, the Federal Aviation Service approves Navstar as a navigational device in aircraft and, as can readily be seen from the 2001 federal radio-navigation plan, continuity of service is a key element in the provision of the service, without which the system simply could not be approved.
	As I thought that some of these questions might come up in the debate, I spoke yesterday to Brigadier General Simon P. Worden USAF, retired, who was responsible for bringing GPS to fruition in 1995. He is now the director of NASA's Ames research centre. Speaking to me in a private capacity, on his own account, he said:
	There is no part of the US economy that does not depend on the continuity of GPS. Any loss of service would have a devastating impact on the US economy.
	According to him, nor could Europe ever be deprived of signals. He went on:
	So many European systems are integrated with US systems that they would all go down if Europe was jammed.
	Where does that leave us? We have a system that offers no advantages whatever over what is freely available elsewhere, yet we are being asked to consider funding to the tune of several billions for what is essentially a European Union vanity project. We are not alone in having reservations. After the conclusion of the Transport Council in Luxembourg on 8 June, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman)who I see in his placewas quoted by the  Financial Times as saying:
	I don't see a strategic case for it. One of the questions we have never asked is how to make a return from this system.
	He added that the UK would seek cancellation if concerns were not answered. In parliamentary replies to me, he has said that the Government have admitted to spending 142 million on the project through the European Space Agency and, through contributions to the EU budget, approximately 17 per cent. of the estimated 790 million that the Commission has invested in the programme. That amounts to 276 million in the past three years. The Government have also added that there is not an identified UK contribution to the design and development phase of the programme via the EU budget. To continue the negotiations on additional funding would be tantamount to signing a blank cheque.
	Therefore, we have to say that we are not content with the Government's approach to discussions on the Commission document. Although the hon. Member for South Thanet was prepared to countenance cancellation of the project outside the Council chamber, it appears that he did not do so inside it. There is, however, a practical alternative, which the hon. Gentleman did not offer to his European colleagues but which he should have pressed. Preceding the development of Galileo is the European geostationary navigation overlay serviceEGNOS.

Stephen Ladyman: It was not my intention to intervene on this debate, but I will not have the hon. Gentleman misrepresent me. I made it very clear inside the Council of Ministers that cancellation had to be a real option if we did not get the answers that we were seeking from the Commission. He should not misrepresent the British Government's position. It was stated very clearly.

Owen Paterson: The debate is whether we are happy with the Government's negotiating stance. They have left us with two forms of public funding, either through community funds or through the European Space Agency. I would have liked EGNOS to be promoted. It is a satellite-based system that will augment Navstar and GLONASS, making them suitable for safety-critical applications such as flying aircraft or navigating ships through narrow channels. Properly integrated with Navstar GPS beyond 2008, that would provide for all Europe's needs. The UK has already paid its contribution of 35 million towards it. It would be a short cut to playing a key role in a global system.

William Cash: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way on the question raised by the former Minister. In the discussions that the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) described in the correspondence to the European Scrutiny Committee, he said that
	a clear majority of Member States underlined the strategic nature of the Galileo programme and the importance they attach to the project.
	So irrespective of anything that he might or might not have said, and irrespective of whether we like it, the fact is that, under the majority voting system, this thing is moving inexorably ahead because the Government, in their vainglorious fashion, happen to believe that they can chuck away taxpayers' money to the tune of billions of pounds without anybody blinking an eyelid.

Owen Paterson: I am most grateful for the mild manner in which my hon. Friend and neighbour made his point. I agree with much of what he says. There is a much cheaper, practical alternative which would give Europe a comprehensive system that is accurate down to a metre. That would involve amalgamating EGNOS with Navstar.
	The Government should have made it absolutely clear in negotiations in the European Council that any further state funding through the European Space Agency or the Community budget would be unacceptable. Our proposal would ensure that Europe had the highest-quality coverage with minimum further investment by the taxpayer. Instead of funding vanity projects, the EU should work closely with the United States to provide a fully integrated global system. That is a real test for the new Government. First, the Prime Minister must negotiate carefully at the intergovernmental conference, as his predecessor approved an EU space policy in the draft mandate from the European Council that will enable the Commission to fund Galileo from its own budget. Secondly, this is a real test of the new Prime Minister's attitude to open-ended public spending projects. The Government should have demanded the integration of EGNOS and GPS, creating a fully integrated global system, and said a firm no to further public expenditure on Galileo. As that has not been the Government's policy so far, I urge my colleagues to vote against the motion.

Michael Connarty: I am saddened by the Opposition's tone, particularly as they have forgotten that the Government's positionand this is even accepted within the Commissionis that nothing that happens in Galileo should be outwith the financial perspectives. The 2013 financial perspectives are agreedthey will be maintainedand no one is giving them away.
	Sadly, I suddenly see in the Opposition a complete lack of ambition. They called the initiative a vanity project, but one of the Government's prime decisions was to argue for small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe to be fully and openly involved in the development of anything to do with space policy or Galileo. The Opposition wish to stop that ambition, and they do not have any vision to offer Europe in the technological field at all. Instead, they will rely on GPS from America and hope that it will remain free, or they would rely on Russia, because its service will be free, or even China, which will also provide a free service. They do not, however, have the ambition to operate an independent system [ Interruption. ] I hear an American voice.

Tobias Ellwood: May I correct the hon. Gentleman? First, everyone in the House wants to support businesses in viable and successful projects. However, as we have just heard from the Minister, the project is about to go down the pan, so the hon. Gentleman is disingenuous in saying that the Opposition do not support businessesthat is absolutely wrong. There is a free service, but he suggests that we should ignore it and use a commercial one instead and make people pay for it. There is no market for that service; no one will buy it when a free service is available.

Michael Connarty: It is a well known strategy to operate a loss leader in business. I studied economics, and there comes a time when one wishes to charge a premium for the services that one offers; that is a well known strategy. If others have made the service available, what is to stop them charging for it? That is an extremely good business model and, in future, when things get crowded in the satellite world, some people who provide the service will say that they must charge for it or, presumably, there will be another form of return. Are we suddenly saying that the USA is a free-market provider of services to the world? That is not a model of the American economy that I recognise.
	I like the idea of ambition in Europe. I shall discuss the European Scrutiny Committee's reservations, but there is the ambition in Europe to do something that parallels and, let us hope, gets ahead of other projects. As the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) said, the Americans know that only with GPS III can they go beyond what Galileo is aiming at, which is why they are trying to get ahead. The drive for technological advance is something that we should applaud. It is the wrong tactic to suggest that ambition is wrong.
	If there are questions about financing, they should be discussed by the Select Committee, as I shall outline. Indeed, we have done so, and we have demanded that the meeting of Chancellors at ECOFIN look closely at the question of viability and financing. We do not work on the basis that we lack ambition, but the new prescription from the Conservatives is to be so conservative that they do not wish to see any advances at all.

Owen Paterson: That is a ludicrous misinterpretation of what I said. I clearly explained a vision of linking EGNOS with GPS and giving Europe the best and most defined servicedown to a metre. Let me address the idea that we are against business. I visited Trafficmaster last week; it now employs 300 people. The jobs are downstream in areas such as e-Call rather than to do with the actual creation of the satellite systems. It supplies 100,000 vehicles and its jobs are downstream and have been created on the back of GPS. The entire Satellic system in Germany is also based on GPS, and it is worth 250 million a month.

Michael Connarty: To underline my point, that system is reliant on GPS provided as a free service by another country. That is an interesting model. I do not envisage it being provided free of charge in future when those who use it have in a sense been captured because they use it. We should think about the Microsoft model if we wish to understand what monopoly means.

Bernard Jenkin: What circumstances might lead the United States to corrupt the signal so that users would have to pay for it, given that a free GPS signal is integral to the success of its economy?

Michael Connarty: Different economic circumstances can arise at any time. No one originally predicted what would happen in terms of Microsoft and the internet. No one thought that bodies would make charges and monopolise the internet to the extent that Microsoft has doneand to the point where the EU has fined it on a number of occasions for abusing its monopoly.
	There is much scaremongering. The key question is whether it is a good idea to involve the nations of Europe in a project to get a better satellite system than EGNOS. It is not a vanity project. It is driven by ambition, and there is nothing wrong with ambition. If that ambition is on such a grand scale that the project is not economically viable, there should be some way of constraining it.
	Our Committee is not of the opinion that there is a blank cheque for those involved to do whatever they wish. This debate is not founded on the desire to take a serious look at what Europe is attempting to achieve. The project was labelled and attacked as a vanity project, and that debate has not addressed the purpose of Galileo.
	Let me raise some serious points. The Committee and its predecessor were concerned that there might have been some pressure on member states irrevocably to move forward in an incremental fashion towards Galileo, without at every turn having a financial check and balance. We were worried that some decisions might be made too hastily and would be insufficiently scrutinised. We were looking for evidence on which to base each stage of the process.
	The latest development throws up some fundamental questions. I say that not because we support some of the points that have been made, but because we wish the project to succeed. The Government must pursue certain questions in the meetings that they attend. Is there a full assessment of what Galileo can realistically achieve together with a credible cost-benefit analysis? That is where ECOFIN has a role to play in justifying the project. Is the project likely to become unviable, particularly with the progress being made on GPS III? The extent of that progress has been proposed as a given, but it might not be. GPS III might not be able to achieve what Galileo can achieve. What Galileo and GPS III can achieve should be examined. Might the ECOFIN analysis be that we would be throwing good money after bad?

William Cash: The hon. Gentleman is a fellow member of the European Scrutiny Committee, and I wish to ask him a question. He is making some percipient points and he advocates costings and a cost-benefit analysis. Does he agree that this matter should be thoroughly investigated not only by means of a cost-benefit analysis by the Court of Auditors, but also in the context of whether there are any irregularities in the manner in which the contracts are put together? In terms of the British contribution, does he think that the matter should go before the Public Accounts Committee, too?

Michael Connarty: The hon. Gentleman, although he criticises them a great deal, keeps referring to the involvement of European institutions. I would prefer ECOFIN and the Finance Ministers of the various countries to look at this issue, rather than referring it to the Court of Auditors. I hope that that is what they will do.
	If, following the analysis, the answer is that the project is to proceed, the Government have said that they will look at it seriously. They are opposed, for example, to mandating Galileo charged services. In other words, there is no question of any Government saying, You will use Galileo, rather than GPS. The decision must be based on preference, but the Governments of Europe might indeed prefer to use Galileo rather than GPS for their own reasons. There needs to be a proper environment in which small and medium-sized enterprises can participate and get some benefit for our economy. Having achieved that, the Government have to look at whether the present public-private partnership negotiations can be restarted. They are firm in their view that the public procurement model should not be used for either the 18-satellite or the 30-satellite proposal. If the project is going to founder, that is the issue it will founder on. This is an issue for the private sector properly to look at.
	In the light of those points, our Committee recommends that we support the Government's position, which is that they continue to negotiate, that the financial perspectives are not breached, that any agreement on post-2013 financing be without prejudice to the outcome of future financial perspectivesin other words, that we consider not just 2013, but beyondthat the funding arrangements are agreed by the Finance Ministers in ECOFIN, and that there is sufficient time for national parliamentary scrutiny. In other words, there should be sufficient time for this Parliament to debate any proposed financial outcome.
	Those are the important issues. We have raised serious doubts, but we should not knock the proposal down because we want to score points. Once again, Conservative Front Benchers have tried to use an issue such as this to posture on Europe. I am pro-Europe and if Europe can do something better and much more securely in the long run, instead of relying on another nation to provide satellite facilities to Europe and its countries, this Government should be supported in such efforts to assist that. However, they have taken a tough negotiating stance and should be supported for doing so. That is what we are being asked to do tonight, and I hope that Members will vote with the Government if the Opposition push the motion to a vote.

Alistair Carmichael: I will not detain the House long. I welcome the Minister to her new position. She comes to the job with a good reputation in other Departments, and I very much hope that she can continue that in the Department for Transport. I am also pleased to see the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) in his place; I have enjoyed working with him since taking up this brief. I understand that he intends to spend more time with his Alfa Romeo. I am sure that I speak for Members in all parts of the House when I wish him well in whatever he does next.
	As I said to the Minister during an intervention, for once I am pleased about the timing of a debate such as this, inasmuch as we are scrutinising a subject before the decision is going to be made. Too often in these European debates, we end up examining a measure after the decision has already been taken. All we are able to do is criticise and describe how things might have been. Having said thatthe Minister might now be thinking, Some people are never satisfiedI fear that, because so much of the detail on the Commission's position is to be made clear in the months to come, the House is unable to have a fully informed debate. I hope that there will be further opportunity for some measure of debate. I appreciate that, as a result of the way in which we organise our business in the House, it is not necessarily going to be possible to have that debate before an October Council. However, be it through the European Scrutiny Committee or some other mechanism, I hope that those who have expressed an interest tonight in this issue can be kept informed before the December Council.
	We Liberal Democrats continue to hold the view that the principle behind Galileo remains sound. We hold the strong view that what is needed is needed for reasons of economic and strategic importance. We do not, however, take the view that that can be an open-ended commitment, which is why we think that the real debate here is the one highlighted by the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Mr. Connarty). It states:
	we suggest that there is a prior assertion from the Commission, which the Minister touches on only briefly, which perhaps also needs to be fully tested  that is the case for continuing the Galileo project at all, rather than writing off the sunk cost and letting Europe's industry continue to exploit the existing and developing opportunities available through GPS uses.
	That is a point that the hon. Gentleman made a few minutes ago and I entirely concur with it. It is an eminently sensible approach to take. The question essentially for the House is how sustainable is the PPP model for which the Government express such enthusiasm. The true point, which will have to be addressed eventually, is if the PPP model does not look like delivering, what will the Government's position be? Frankly, we cannot answer that question at the moment, because it is a judgment that can be made only once the figures are available. That is why I remain concerned that we are still being asked tonight to buy a pig in a poke.
	We concur with the Government's position for now. I cannot go beyond that and I do not think that the Government would be sensible to try to do so. We remain keen to support this, but the sums must add up.

William Cash: There have been references to the European Scrutiny Committee report this evening, and the hon. Gentleman just mentioned paragraph 2.24 of the 23rd report. Perhaps it would not be a good idea if hon. Members were left with the belief that the Committee had supported the project. The report states that the Committee agrees with the suggestion that
	no final decision on the future of Galileo should be taken until the Commission's ideas on how to carry forward and fund Galileo are fully developed and explained.
	In other words, the Committee is making the lukewarm suggestion that perhaps, in due course, it might possiblyin extremely unlikely circumstancescome up with an answer to all this rubbish.

Alistair Carmichael: I thought that that was what I had just said. I also thought that that was what the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk had said. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) made a lengthy intervention, so I trust that he will not have to make any further contribution to the debate. On that basis, I am happy to let matters rest.

Bernard Jenkin: I have taken a 10-year interest in this subject, off and on, and I first join others in congratulating the Minister on her new role. This is a baptism of fire. She has walked into the lions' den and I think that I speak for every right hon. and hon. Member when I say that nothing is intended personally against her by the criticisms that we are making of this project.
	I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson), who spoke for the Opposition. He has today been appointed shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, which demonstrates that the Conservative party takes seriously the arguments that he makes in this House, including on European matters such as the Galileo project.
	If I step back from the immediacy of this debate, I see in this project a microcosm of what is wrong with the Government's overall European policyan inability to say no. We know exactly the position of the Department for Transport on this project. Indeed, it was reported a little while ago that the Department for Transport had attempted to secure funding for the project from the Ministry of Defence. The obvious reason for that is that the Department for Transport knows, and we know, but nobody will say so publicly, that it is a covert defence project for the European Union. If we ask any other European country, it will know that the project is part of the European Union defence agenda. That is why the Department for Transport opened negotiations with the MOD, saying, If this is so important to Her Majesty's Government, surely the MOD should pay for it. It shouldn't come out of the transport budget.

Michael Connarty: I put the same question to the hon. Gentleman as he put to me. If defence systems currently rely on satellites provided through GPS by the US, and he is adamant that the US will never withdraw that, why should Europe think that it requires anything other than GPS?

Bernard Jenkin: I agree totally with the hon. Gentleman. Some countries, however, share the anti-American paranoiato which, I think, he subscribeswhereby if the signal is not transmitted by a European-owned satellite, it is somehow not decent, proper or reliable. I assure him, however, that the signal that we get from American satellites is extremely reliable for all defence purposes that I can envisage. Some European countries might believe in what they call a bipolar world, in which the EU should somehow become a counterpoint, and a balance against, American power. Under those circumstances, they might be deluding themselves that such an independent capability is vital for strategic purposes.
	The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) spoke about the strategic importance of the Galileo project, although he did not explain what that strategic importance was. Clearly, however, he subscribes to the idea that there is something strategic about our having our own European satellite system. However, given that our closest ally on the other side of the Atlantic, whether we are European, British, German or French, is the United States of America, I can see no strategic case for such a satellite system. I can foresee no circumstances in which we would need an alternative system.

William Cash: In encouraging my hon. Friend in his important argument about the extent to which anti-Americanism lies behind the promotion of this project, may I ask him whether he heard this morning an extremely interesting programme by Justin Webb on the attitudes of the Frenchincluding, for example, Hubert Vdrinewho are absolutely obsessed with anti-Americanism? The very point that my hon. Friend makes is demonstrated over and again in the attitudes that they adopt. But if we consider the big landscape, which I think he is seeking to paint, we ought to remember that between 1940 and 1945 the Americans did an enormous amount to save Europe, let alone the United Kingdom.

Bernard Jenkin: I very much hope that my hon. Friend gets an opportunity to speak in his own time in this debate, because he has such a valuable contribution to make. I should point out that the United States not only helped us win the second world war but guaranteed western European security throughout the cold war, and underpins the new struggle, which the new Prime Minister calls the new cold war, against international terrorism. I repeat to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk that I can foresee no circumstances whatever in which it would be in the national interests of the United States to corrupt the signal or to turn off or start charging for the system that it currently provides to the world for free. Providing that free system is part of the Pax Americana that it dreams of. It is part of its influence in the world. It would be contrary to its national interest to start playing politics with a system of that nature. As has already been explained, to corrupt it for us, it would have to corrupt it for its own businesses and commerce, and of course it would never do such a thing.

Ann Winterton: My hon. Friend has skilfully kicked away the arguments for the strategic importance of Galileo. Will he now turn his attention to its supposed economic benefits, and will he respond to what the European Commission has proposed, which is that it will create 150,000 jobs Europe wide?

Bernard Jenkin: I am always a little sceptical about figures produced by the European Commission on the success of its policies, given that Europe has been far more effective at producing public sector jobs than private sector jobs over the past 10 or 15 years. But if I may just pick up the challenge laid down by my hon. Friend, the key question is where the private sector revenues will come from. If there was any prospect of a secure revenue stream for the project, the private sector would be willing to invest in order to harness that revenue stream. Not only does that revenue stream not exist, but there is no prospect of it coming into existence. The idea that this could be a privately funded project, resting on private capital, charging a privately generated revenue stream to get the satellites into orbit, has now been exposed. The project has been in the public domain for 10 years. The European Commission has been promulgating the idea that somehow the money will appear as a result of the satellites' commercial potential for 10 years. The money will not appear. The revenue stream is not there. There comes a point when the Government must ante-up to their own position, which is that they should oppose the system in principle. It is a waste of money. It will not fly. It is a dud system.

David Taylor: This is like the dead parrot sketch. Is not the hon. Gentleman's unquestioning, illogical and chronic technical deference to the USA, as shared by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), really just covert anti-Europeanism? It is, is it not?

Bernard Jenkin: There are many things that the EU could do very well. It could do free trade well. Unfortunately, it does not. It could do lighter regulation. It could do co-operation much better. There are many things that we hope and pray the EU can be reformed to do very much better, but with the best will in the world, it will find it very difficult to provide a global satellite positioning system for free, which is what the Americans provide for us. There is a saying about gift horses and looking them in the mouth. We have a gift horse and we are looking it in the mouth. We do not need to pay for our own gift horse when we have been given this gift by the United States for the world to enjoy. It is not anti-European. I am waiting for the proponents of the system to demonstrate that there is some commercial logic behind it, which is what I was promised in European Standing Committee B. To pay credit to the Government, they did say that they would not go ahead with this unless there was a commercial logic to it. I put it to them that there is no commercial logic to this system.
	I want to get back to the crucial opening point that I made, which is that this is a microcosm of what is wrong with the Government's European policy. We all know that the Minister is sitting on the Treasury Bench because the Foreign Office has decided that the Department of Transport must not veto the project.

William Cash: It cannot veto it.

Bernard Jenkin: Ten years ago, the Government could have vetoed the proposal, but as my hon. Friend says, they cannot do so now. Their attitude is, We must never say no; we must always say 'yes, but'. There comes a point, however, when once the money starts being wasted we should say no, because if all those satellites become airborne, it will be the common agricultural policy of the stars.

Tobias Ellwood: It is a pleasure to participate in the debate, but I am saddened to hear that this is one of the first opportunities we have had to debate Galileo, even though the project is now advanced.
	I welcome the Minister to her position, although she has been thrown in at the deep end. Her body language when she answered questions made it clear that she is uncomfortable with what she has been given to do. She could not even come up with the costings when I asked how much the entire project would cost. She could not tell us how much has been spent so far, or give the long-term cost of the project. She was asked a straightforward question but she could not give an answer; instead she tried to dance around the idea that it is something the Government actually want, yet the facts show that that is not the case, as my hon. Friends have illustrated.
	The proposal comes from the European Scrutiny Committee, which thought that Members would want to debate where matters stood on the Galileo project. Absolutely right, considering how much money has been spent on it. We have been given a vague promise that we will have an opportunity in October to review where things stand.

Michael Connarty: How much has been spent on the project?

Tobias Ellwood: That is exactly the question I put to the Minister, but I could not get a response. The right hon. Lady has come to a debate on Galileo, yet she cannot tell us how much has been spent so far.
	The Galileo system was due to be operational in 2008; that will not happen. It was supposed to be compatible with the GPS system and with GLONASS, the Russian system. Before I go into detail about Galileo I want to talk about those two satellite systems. The American GPS system was created in the 1980s for military purposes and now has 30 satellites in the sky, costing the US Government about $750 million a year. As we have heard, President Clinton opened it to the world in 1966. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) says that it might be switched off, but that is madness on two counts.

Michael Connarty: rose

Tobias Ellwood: I shall not give way, because I want to make progress.

Michael Connarty: The hon. Gentleman is misrepresenting me.

Tobias Ellwood: I am not misrepresenting the hon. Gentleman; if I can make some progress he will understand where I am coming from.
	The GPS system is making significant revenue streams for myriad companies, both national and international, not only in America but across Europe and the world as a whole. Were the system to be cut off, it would cause absolute economic chaos. That is the first reason it will not be switched off and the second is that it is part of a NATO operation. The security of this country, Europe and the wider world depend on the satellite system, so there are two profound reasons why it will not be switched off.
	There are commercial aspects, too. We heard that even the Minister has a piece of GPS equipment in her ministerial car [ Interruption. ] It is in her private car. She has one of the TomTom navigation systems that are also used for map-making, land surveying, scientific studies and air traffic control, as well as in clocks and timepieces and for shipping, not to mention their military uses, from missile guidance to transport systems. All are extremely successful and GPS sales average about 20 million a year, with 95 per cent. of the units sold for civilian rather than military use. That is a success story and we should be aware of it. Not only is the equipment efficient; it is reliable, accurate and, as has been said time and again, it is free.
	The GLONASS system is a different story. It was completed in 1995, with 24 satellites, but fell into disrepair after the collapse of the Russian economy. Russia is committed to restoring the system but there have been delays in the process. Huge sums of money have had to be thrown at the system to get it back up and working. There are lessons to be learned from both those systems and we need to learn them quickly before the decision in October, which commits us one way or another.
	I will quickly summarise where we stand with Galileo. The system was devised in 2002 to rival the GPS system. There were eight companies and five nations involved, but today, as we have heard, the project is floundering. Only one out of 30 satellites is in orbit and that is a test system. The project was supposed to be in operation by next year, but the latest estimate is 2014if the project goes ahead and we get all the satellites up in orbit. The German Transport Minister recently described the project as in profound and serious crisis. That crisis is being caused by funding.
	The original plan involved 50:50 financing between the EU and the European Space Agency. The UK part of the funding came from the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for Transport. The private sector was to pay for two thirds. As we have heard, the original cost was 3.2 billion; that is now spiralling towards 10 billion over the next 20 years. I have asked how much has been spent by the British and we have not had an answer.
	The original plan involved a public-private partnership, with companies footing much of the bill in the hope of selling satellite navigation services to commercial users. Who is going to buy a satellite service today when there is a free service available? The only organisations that would buy satellite services would be the Government and public sector organisationsto prop up the costly system. Perhaps we can expect to see congestion charging or the military being converted to the system in order to prop up the funding for the entire project.
	If we vote on the motion, we will see Labour Members and the Government walking through the Division Lobby, but I do not believe they will fully understand what they are voting for or signing up to. We do not need this system, we cannot afford it and there is no market for it at all. It is a sheer waste of money and, as we have heard today, the project is based on the ridiculous assumption that the US will somehow turn its system off.

Michael Connarty: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will check  Hansard tomorrow and then apologise to me. At no time did I say that there was any possibility of someone turning off the system. I did say that there is a possibility of charges being placed on the system when it suits the US supplier. That would be disruption due to cost. I think that there should be an alternative. If the Russians think that there should be an alternative and the Chinese are developing an alternative, Europe should think about developing an alternative [ Interruption. ]

Tobias Ellwood: As my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) said from a sedentary position, what is the basis for that assumption? Is it simply a spurious idea that has been introduced to support the system? I have not heard anything substantial about that whatsoever. The Americans have insisted that that will not happenmostly because it would cause economic chaos, not only in Britain and in Europe, but in America. It simply will not happen. Another reason is our relationship within NATO. We have a free system and we should use it. It has been said again and again, Why sell Pepsi Cola when you can get Coca-Cola free?
	The European Scrutiny Committee also expressed doubts in its report. It accepted the potential of Galileo to be a key project, but argued that it should not be proceeded with unless the costs were justifiable. The Minister has not justified those costs today. We need a system. There is one that is free and that is the one that we should use. The EU has three options. First, it could set new deadlines for the consortium to raise more funds. Secondly, it could make the project a full public sector operation and foot the bill. Thirdly, it could end the project altogether.
	The project shows the ugly, bureaucratic and autocratic side of the EU. The decision on the project stands alongside such bizarre decisions as having two Parliaments for MEPs and having a defence force in the EU the replicates and mimics NATO's. I end where I began: by saying that the Minister came here today unable to give any costs. I urge the House to vote against the motion.

William Cash: It is not that often that the European Scrutiny Committee ends up having one of its proposals for debate taken on the Floor of the House. I wish that that happened more often. It is evidence of the importance to be attached to the question that this happens to be one of the rare circumstances in which such a debate takes place. This is really the European gravy train mark 1.
	We have heard a lot of useful contributions from hon. Memberson both sides of the House, in fairnessexpressing concerns about the costs. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) made a perfectly reasonable point about the need for a cost-benefit analysis. Indeed, at the heart of the Government's proposals is a severe question mark over the way in which the process is being conducted. As others have pointed out, the abandonment of the PPP element demonstrates in itself the lack of the proposals' viability. However, the problem is that no one can actually stop them.
	There will be interminable discussions. As I suggested earlier to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, the Chairman of our Committee, there might be a reference to the Public Accounts Committee about our contribution. There might be a reference to the Court of Auditors about the amount that has been frittered away. Irregularities may well emerge, and if they do, I hope that there will be a proper investigation. However, will anything stop? It will not, because there is no power to do that, unless the Council of Ministers and the Commission change the position about which the former Minister, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), has told us. His most recent letter of only a few weeks ago was quite clear that
	a clear majority of Member States underlined the strategic nature of the Galileo programme and the importance they attach to the project.
	Some of us sometimes point out that it is perfectly obvious that there is a Euro-elephant in the House of Commons [ Laughter. ] I am glad that the Minister has a sense of humour. I had the pleasure of being in opposition to her when she and I had respective Front-Bench positions a few years ago. She knows perfectly well that there is not only a Euro-elephant in the House of Commons, but a pink Euro-elephantthis is a complete fantasy world.
	Let us look back at the basis and origin of this. Poor old Galileo was taken to the cleaners by the inquisition for misrepresenting, as it put it, so we could at least admit that he had his feet on the ground, when the inquisition let him do so. However, the Minister, by contrast, is being pushed into outer space on this subject. She is not having a happy christening by being plunged into one of the worst projects that the European Commission has ever put forward. The House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee has recommended that this debate should be held on the Floor of the House and the Government have accepted that. Given the conventions of the House and what goes on behind the scenes, a strong message is being sent out.
	I am sure that we will vote against the motion. I presume that the right hon. Lady will troop through the other Lobby, but what a nonsense that will be, given every single thing that has come from Government Members, ranging from the former Minister's letter to the body language of the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk. Despite his enthusiasm for all things European, I think that even he has had to reach the conclusion, underneath it all, that this is not a runner. The proposal is hopeless, and it is appalling that a clear majority of member states, in this crazy, zany, irrational fantasy world that they inhabit, could continue to underline the strategic nature of the Galileo programme.
	Several hon. Members have gone through the arguments about the extent to which the American system is free. We know that the project before us is not a runner, and we know that there is no way that it can be made into one, so what does the issue represent at bottom? That is the sort of reason why the own-resources decision has not yet been debated in the House, despite the fact that it was endorsed by the previous Prime Minister in December 2005. This is really all about the reduction of the rebate, the intricacies of the budget arrangements, and the impact that they have on our taxpayers' pockets. Hon. Members should be under no illusion on that point.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) said that the project was costing, or had so far cost, the British taxpayer 35 million or 35 million; I was not sure which he meant, but whichever way we look at it, the reality is that a huge amount of our taxpayers' money is being subsumed in this absurd project. It is not a laughing matter if we think of it as money that could otherwise be spent on useful and important projects such as hospitals and schools.

Owen Paterson: To clarify matters for my hon. Friend, I was quoting a reply to the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). The figure of 35 million refers to the cost so far of EGNOS. On a point mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), I have received a very limited reply from the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) that shows that our country has spent 276 million on Galileo in the past three years alone.

William Cash: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, as ever, for getting that point out into the open. We are talking about much bigger sums than I had previously thought. We are talking about a failed project; that is clear. There is no way of stopping it, and further vast amounts of money are, no doubt, about to be spent on it, in an attempt to get it right. Almost certainly, there will be massive accountancy failures. It is certain that the European Court of Auditors will point all that out in due course, but that will be after the project has been allowed to continue. The project has no useful purpose whatever. It cannot fly and cannot even be described as a duck. It cannot be described as a workable system. The proposal is completely absurd. This is the first time that the Minister has come before the House in her current role, and I sympathise with her for having to turn up on this occasion. I wish her well for future occasions, because I cannot believe that anyone else has pulled as short a straw as the one that she pulled tonight.

Rosie Winterton: This has been a marvellous debate.

Tobias Ellwood: Let's do it again.

Rosie Winterton: Yes, we should. I can see what the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) is up against when trying to make up his mind on what to do about the European People's party, given the contributions made tonight. I am sorry to hear that the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) is leaving the transport brief so soon after my arrival, and that we will be losing the moderate voice of the Conservative party to Northern Ireland.
	This has been a wide-ranging debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) took a rather more measured, sensible approach to the subject, by contrast with the slightly paranoid approach of the Opposition party. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) made some interesting interventions, some of which were so long that I received notes at the Dispatch Box, which normally only happens during a speech. I shall try to address some of the points that have been made, particularly with regard to the UK contribution to the programme. I shall reiterate what I said earlier but perhaps did not make clear enough.
	The development programme is jointly funded by the European Commission and the European Space Agency. The UK is contributing about 17 per cent., or 142 million, directly through the European Space Agency. I wanted to get that on the record.

Tobias Ellwood: A lot of money comes directly from the European Commission, into which we channel money as well. Is there an additional sum that comes indirectly from the UK via the European Commission?

Rosie Winterton: The test and development phase, as I said
	 It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, Madam Deputy Speaker  put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 16 (Proceedings under an Act or on European Union documents).

Madam Deputy Speaker: I think the Ayes have it.

Hon. Members: No.
	 Division deferred till Wednesday 4 July, pursuant to Standing Order  No.  41A (Deferred divisions).

ESTIMATES

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 145 (Liaison Committee),
	That this House agrees with the Report [29th June] of the Liaison Committee. [Mr. Roy.]
	 Question agreed to.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Ordered,
	That Mr. Brooks Newmark be discharged from the Science and Technology Committee and Mrs. Nadine Dorries be added.  [Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection].

HEARING LOOPS (SHOPS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Mr. Roy.]

Tom Levitt: For four years before I became a Member of Parliament, I worked as an adviser to local government on how to make mainstream council services accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, of whom there are about 9 million in the UK. My work started well before Parliament passed the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and 10 years before it was extended to cover goods and services.
	Tonight's debate is, however, prompted not by my experience, but by research carried out in shops in Buxton by my constituent, David Law. Mr. Law has a profound hearing loss and wears two powerful hearing aids. His experience in recent months has turned him into a committed campaigner on the issue of hearing induction loops in shops. More of Mr. Law later. Let me explain some of the background.
	There is no precise figure on the total number of people who wear hearing aids. The number of digital hearing aids provided by the national health service is not centrally collected, and some people pay privately for their hearing aids outside the NHS. About 2 million people use hearing aids daily. The unmet demand, however, is massive. There are between 5 million and 6 million people who would benefit from wearing a hearing aid. The good news is that the NHS now provides cutting edge digital hearing aids, which until just a few years ago were available only to people who could afford to spend up to 2,000, from a private dispenser.
	Hearing aids alone do not solve every problem for hearing impaired people, especially in noisy environments. Many people benefit from amplified telephones, door bells or other devices linked to their hearing aid. Above all, it is the induction loop, used alongside the hearing aid, that has brought the most widespread benefit. Induction loop systems can greatly help deaf and hard of hearing people who wear a hearing aid, as they can reduce or even cut out background noise. An induction loop therefore ensures that the hearing aid user hears only what he or she wants to hear.
	Some deaf and hard of hearing people use loops in their homes, to hear their television or telephone better. Induction loops are now widely used in theatres, cinemas and places of worship to help people better understand performances and services. Closer to home, many Members of Parliament and the public find the induction loop systems in this Chamber and in our Committee Rooms to be of immense benefit.
	An induction loop is simply a cable that goes round a specific listening area. The area can be as small as a single listener at an underground station ticket office, for example, or as vast as a theatre auditorium. The system can be fixed or mobile. An electric current is fed to the loop by an amplifier, and the signal is generated by a source of sound. That sound can be from a sound system, a TV set or any microphone placed in front of a person who is speaking. The resultant current in the loop produces a magnetic field that simulates the sound. A hearing aid set to its T position can pick up that magnetic field, if it is within loop. Most hearing aids, and all hearing aids that are provided by the NHS, have that T position.
	Induction loops involve relatively straightforward technology. They are not hugely expensive, and every hearing aid user can benefit from them, if their hearing aid is compatible. However, despite all those promising factors, all too often too few hearing aid users benefit from induction loops in commercial and public premises. For a start, induction loops are often not advertised properly. Poor signage is a very common problem. That is fundamental, because if a hearing aid user does not know that the induction loop is present, they will not switch their hearing aid to the T position. The coverage of an induction loop needs to be displayed, and if there is no sign indicating its availability, it is obviously impossible to work out where the loop is.
	David Law surveyed the shops in the main shopping areas of Buxton. He confined his research to those which advertised the presence of an induction loop through the universal symbola white ear shape and the letter T against a maroon background. These are some examples of what he was told: Yes, we have a loop system, but you have to ask us to switch it on for you; Yes, we have a loop system, but it hasn't worked for ages; Yes, we have a loop system, but the person who knows about it isn't here today; Yes, we have a loop system, but no one on the staff knows how to use it, or how to tell whether it is working or not; or even No, we don't have a loop system any more, even though the sign on the door still says that we have. Unfortunately, he found precious few examples where people said, Yes, we have a loop system, it is permanently switched on, regularly tested and all our staff know how to use it. Welcome!
	When he wrote to the stores in question, Mr. Law invariably found that the regional managers who replied to his letters were more aware of the importance of loop systems than shop workers and managers. In some cases, the replies directly contradicted what he had been told: All our staff are aware of the loop system and have been trained to use it; The loop system is regularly tested and is in full working order; or, more helpfully, Thank you for drawing this to our attention. The problem with the loop system has been addressed, and it is now in full working order.
	My research, which I conducted 12 years ago with local authorities, showed an alarming use of inappropriate technology. In one case, users of the induction loop fitted at a council's housing department customer services counter could be heard by hearing aid users throughout the whole building, as the device was many times too powerful for its designated use. As a result, hearing aid users in other parts of the building could not use their local loop systems without interference, because the council had paid well over the odds for a device of a far higher specification than was needed.
	Those problems were also highlighted in a national study of the retail sector in 1998 by the Grass Roots Group, a mystery shopping organisation. In its report, The Challenge of Disability, it found that less than a third of the outlets that it visited in the financial and high street market sectors had induction loops at the customer service desks, but even when induction loops were in place, they were often of little benefit. Of the induction loop systems tested by deaf and hard of hearing people, 61 per cent. in shops were found not to be working properly. In the past nine years, I recognise that many large retailers and the main banks and building societies have invested heavily in the provision of induction loops, often in response to the full implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act 2004, but have they invested well if the facility is not being used? The Act requires providers of goods and services to make reasonable adjustments to provide those goods and services to people with disabilities in a manner equivalent to that provided to others. From Mr. Law's research and from discussing the matter with organisations such as the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, of which I was a trustee for several years, I believe that probably little, if any, improvement has taken place in the performance of induction loops over those years. For example, a recent survey of London Underground ticket offices found that fewer than half the loop systems at ticket offices were fully functional.
	In taking matters forward, I want to set out several simple steps by which the retail sector could dramatically improve access to goods and services for almost 2 million people. First, induction loops are only part, albeit a vital one, of what we might call the communications solution. Staff need to know what an induction loop is, what benefits it can bring and, most fundamentally, how it can be turned on.
	Secondly, induction loops must be regularly tested and maintained, in the same way as a security or fire alarm system would be. It is not acceptable for retailers to assume that their induction loops are working up until the time that they receive a complaint from a customer. Relying on customers to complain is not an acceptable testing method, not least because many people with hearing impairments do not have the confidence to complain; they will assume that their hearing aid is not working rather than the loop system. Testing of induction loops is vital and should preferably be carried out once a month. Loop listeners, which replicate a hearing aid set to the T position, are inexpensive and easy to use.
	Thirdly, shops and service providers must recognise that not every hearing aid user will understand the benefits of an induction loop. Sadly, too many new hearing aid users come away from their visit to the audiologist without an essential knowledge of these systems. Fourthly, there should always be clear signage indicating the existence of each and every induction loop. Fifthly, different retail situations suit different types of induction loops. Expert advice should always be sought when installing loops to British standard BS 7594.
	I hope that every retailer, however large or small, will take more seriously the needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing people. It is not often that the retail sector has the opportunity dramatically to improve its customer service to 2 million people at such relatively little cost. For the smallest retail premises, just one mobile induction loop and a listening device together will cost under 200. Such an investment could make a dramatic improvement in access, reflected in a dramatic improvement in sales. For larger premises, the real challenge is not so much the necessity to provide the induction loops, although in some cases it clearly is, but instead to ensure that all their staff properly understand how they work and how to maintain them. That is a far from onerous taskit is just a requirement to have clear policies and procedures that staff are expected to follow. Making good use of existing equipment is not just the right thing to doit is good business.
	In summary, if, where the installation of an induction loop is a reasonable adjustment to makeI can think of very few customer interfaces where it would not bewill my hon. Friend the Minister ensure that standards of installation, staff training, customer awareness, testing and maintenance are high enough to ensure that the aim of the 2004 Act is achieved in respect of equal access to goods and services for people who use hearing aids? I hope that the retail sector will not turn a deaf ear to the needs of millions of hearing impaired customers and will not pay lip service to lip readersbut that is another story.

Anne McGuire: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) on securing the debate on hearing loops, which, as we have heard, play a valuable role in enabling hearing-impaired people to gain access to goods and services. Through the debate, my hon. Friend helps to raise the profile in the House and beyond of the exclusion that deaf and hard-of-hearing people can face. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the debate and set out the Government's commitment to overcoming the barriers that hearing-impaired people face. I also hope to show the way in which we are fulfilling that commitment.
	First, let me pay tribute to my hon. Friend's personal record of supporting deaf and hearing-impaired people. In positions such as trusteeship of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People and membership of the all-party parliamentary group on deafness, he has supported hearing-impaired people to achieve their goal of full and active participation in our society. By promoting the RNID's telephone hearing check, he highlighted the impact of deafness and the importance of its early detection.
	The debate is further evidence of my hon. Friend's commitment to championing the inclusion of those people who regard themselves as severely or profoundly deaf. The RNID's figures show that there are 700,000 such adults in the UK. My hon. Friend mentioned his constituent, Mr. David Law, who conducted a survey in Buxton. Like many of those 700,000 adults, he faces significant barriers in his everyday life. Those people also experience the isolation that comes from having an impairment that hinders communication with others, yet they have a right to enjoy the activities that non-disabled people take for granted.
	In the debate, we are considering many hundreds of thousands of severely hearing-impaired people, such as Mr. Law, who have a right to a full and fulfilling life. The Government are achieving that for all disabled people. We promised to establish a comprehensive set of civil rights for disabled people and, as my hon. Friend knows, we achieved that by significantly extending and improving the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, to which he referred, culminating in the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, which gained support from hon. Members of all parties. The Disability Discrimination Act, as amended and strengthened by the Government, requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments to overcome the barriers that disabled people face when accessing goods and services. Those wide-ranging duties mean that the service provider may have to consider a variety of adjustments for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
	My hon. Friend has focused on hearing loops in shops, but I am pleased that he mentioned the hearing loop on the parliamentary estate. Like him, I know from colleagues that it is a first-class system, which benefits Members, staff and visitors to the Palace of Westminster. I fully acknowledge that hearing loops are an important technological development and that they pull down barriers for disabled people. They help many hearing-impaired people access services, and I support their use whenever possible.
	My hon. Friend made some valuable points about the use of hearing loops. Clearly, as he said, it is not sufficient simply to install a hearing loop. Retailers and other service providers must also ensure that customers are aware that the loop is available, that staff are fully trained in its use and that, as he said, it is maintained in full working order. I have some personal experience of that. For a meeting with constituents I got the portable hearing loop from my local authority, only to find, much to my embarrassment, that it did not work on that occasion. I assure my hon. Friend that such factors are recognised in the way in which the duty of reasonable adjustment operates. That is made clear in the code of practice that the Disability Rights Commission published. The code provides practical guidance and advice for service providers on how to fulfil the duty of reasonable adjustment.
	The code also has statutory status. That means that a court that is considering a claim of discrimination in accessing goods and services has to take account of any parts of the code that are relevant to the case. The code is relevant to many points that my hon. Friend made. For example, it explains that training employees is an important factor in providing reasonable adjustments. Paragraph 6.12 makes it clear that staff
	should know how to provide an auxiliary service and how to use any auxiliary aids that the service provider offers... Providing such training may help to avoid a finding of unlawful discrimination.
	The code also points out that service providers should ensure that any auxiliary aids they provide are carefully chosen and properly maintained. It uses the example of a person who is told that a theatre has a hearing loop, but on the day he or she cannot enjoy the performance because the loop is out of service. Although the theatre provided an auxiliary aid, it failed to check that the loop was working properly. That means that the theatre is unlikely to have taken reasonable steps to enable disabled people to use its services.
	I should point out that the installation of a hearing loop may not be affordable or practical in all cases, in spite of the fact that my hon. Friend quite rightly raised the issue of costs, which are quite insignificant in some respects. However, even if installing a loop is not possible, it does not mean that the service provider should do nothing. Duties under part 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act require the service provider to anticipate the range of barriers that a disabled customer might faceand there is almost always something that they can do. We need to build a better understanding among service providers of the variety of hearing impairments and the range of adjustments that they can make. That way, we will encourage service providers to think more creatively about the adjustments that they can put in place and we will further improve access to goods and services for people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
	Of course, the DDA recognises that service providers may not be in a position to make every aspect of their service accessible. Its duty of reasonable adjustment aims to balance the rights of the disabled person and the interests of the service provider. The Act requires service providers to make whatever adjustments are reasonable in the particular circumstances. They need to consider factors such as the cost and practicality of making the adjustment and what resources they have available.
	Service providers need to understand that not all adjustments need to be complicated. Simply training staff to speak slowly, clearly and directly to the customer will help people who can lip-read and communicating by writing things down on a pad will help other deaf people, but that does not mean that a small retailer should ignore the wider options, including whether it would be practical and affordable to provide a hearing loop. Of course, for the larger, well-resourced retailers, reasonable adjustment means that a far greater range of adjustments should be achievable. They should be better placed to include more significant adjustments such as the installation of hearing loops.
	Since introducing the new duties, we have regularly monitored how service providers are responding to them, and I would like to advise my hon. Friend that the position is encouraging. Although we do not have figures specifically on adjustments for deaf people, research published earlier this year showed that the majority of businessesindeed, nearly 90 per centhad made or planned adjustments to the provision of their services. There is also increasing evidence on the high street of adjustments such as signs offering assistance to disabled people and signs showing hearing loops in place, although I appreciate my hon. Friend's comment that more establishments with loops could make that more obvious.
	Overall, the evidence shows that service providers are taking a more positive attitude towards serving disabled people, but I am sure my hon. Friend will appreciate and agree that legislation is not enough in itself to achieve a fairer society. Our aim is to stimulate the creation of a society where changes are made because it is the right thing to do for disabled people and not just because the law requires it. Our research findings show that we are moving in that direction. The majority of service providers who had made adjustments said, interestingly, that they would have made at least some of them even if the DDA had not been in place. That links into my hon. Friend's comment about it being good for business.
	We have a long way to go to ensure that service providers automatically design accessible services. In the meantime, we need to encourage service providers to meet their DDA duties. In our most recent campaign, we worked with trade organisations and business intermediaries, because small businesses are the most likely to turn to these sources for business advice. We worked closely with them to boost the expertise and capacity of such organisations to provide advice on DDA issues. We also have information on reasonable adjustmentsincluding adjustments for deaf and hard of hearing peopleavailable on the Department's website. A clear message in our campaigns has been that making adjustments need not be expensive or burdensome. That is borne out by all the research findings. Nearly three quarters of those providers who had made adjustments had found no problem putting them into place.
	The Government alone cannot ensure the effective implementation of the legislation, however. We all have a role to play, and we need to work in partnership with other organisations. I particularly commend organisations such as the Royal National Institute for Deaf People for work in this area. Through its websites, the RNID provides advice on the duties of service providers and the types of reasonable adjustment that may be made.
	Disabled people themselves can improve implementation of the law through enforcement of it. That does not necessarily mean formal enforcement through the courts. That is only meant to be used where other routes fail. Instead, disabled people might want to consider an informal approach. I know from one correspondent how successful such an approach can be. When he drew the attention of a large retailer to the barriers at his local branch, and mentioned the DDA, the company made significant access improvements. Disabled people can also seek advice from the Disability Rights Commissionor, from October, the new Commission for Equality and Human Rightsif they believe that a service provider has discriminated by failing to make a reasonable adjustment.
	I thank my hon. Friend once again for this opportunity to highlight an important issue and to explain the Government's record in promoting equality for disabled people. His constituent, Mr. David Law, deserves a vote of thanks for carrying out the research not only on his own behalf but on behalf of other members of the community in Buxton and elsewhere who suffer from a hearing impairment and find that they cannot participate in the way that non-disabled people can.
	I am confident that we have achieved a strong framework of disability rights to support our aim of enabling hearing-impaired peopleindeed, all disabled peopleto become full and active members of society. Through highlighting these issues, as my hon. Friend has done, we will continue to work towards achieving our vision that, by 2025, we will have true equality for all disabled people in this country.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twelve minutes past Eleven o'clock.